Pranav Mistry, pronounced as mistri, was born in Palanpur, India in 1981. He has had a PhD and Master of Science from MIT Media Lab and also a Master of Design from Bombay IIT. He is presently a research assistant and a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab.

What has he done?

He has created a lot of cool things. I will try my best to describe his inventions.

1) Sixth Sense Technology

                It basically allows you to interact with the digital world with natural hand gestures. So, it’s more like an iPod’s touch screen effect, which can take place on any surface as the computer is actually a mobile projector. You can get the information about any book or movie just by scanning it. Also, it is possible to take pictures and manipulate by just simple hand gestures. 

2) Quickies

                These are digital sticky notes which can be written using a light pen and then sent as a SMS to the receiver. 

3) Third Eye

                This was something that really attracted my attention. What this device basically does is that it would read a few secret patterns on display boards and convert them to show something completely different. In simple terms, two people can look at the same thing and literally see it differently. You would have this eye glasses which would be programmed to read the surface. For an example, an Indian tourist in America, with this technology would be able to read the directions given in Hindi, even though the directions are written in English. 

4) Inktuitive

                It allows people to draw 3-D figures with a light pen. 

5) TaPuMa

                This allows people to search on the internet or other databases using physical objects like a coffee mug, stapler, scissors, etc. 

There are many other inventions, but I believe I have summarized the most important ones. For further information about his inventions please visit his personal site at this link or view his talks at TED at this link.

What I have observed?

From all his talks and inventions he has an interest in trying to link the real world to the virtual world. He wants to make using the digital world easier by making the interface receive physical signals like hand gestures and the movement of our fingers. 

His research interests include Gestural Interaction, Computer Vision, Intelligent interactive systems and environments, Ubiquitous Computing, Interaction Design, Social Computing, Robotics, Tangible Computing, Collective Intelligence, Object Amelioration, Augmented reality, Computational photography