Engineer Creates Lens Filter That Lets You Mute and Talk Through Hand Gestures on Video Call

Gestures to tell members of a group call what you’re thinking? Yes, that’s possible now. In the post-COVID world, the new normal has changed in a lot of ways. The most evident change is human interaction. From personal to professional, a majority of interactions are now limited to the screens.

While personal group chats are survivable even with all tabs on full volume, professional chats are a different case altogether. Most commonly, in workplace meetings, people tend to mute their mics. Especially in meetings or classes where one speaker or a few designated speakers are going to speak.

In such cases, every time you have a query or a comment, muting and unmuting the call can get irritating. The same issue was noticed by engineer Cameron Hunter who has come up with a brilliant solution. He posted this video to Twitter earlier today: “In video meetings, it's a hassle to unmute just to say one word especially if someone else is speaking. I created a video lens that uses hand gestures to show comic-book style messages instead. So far it's been pretty fun!” read the caption.

As seen in the video, he performs certain gestures, which the lens AI then translates into words that pop-up on the screen. Here are the gestures-

- An open palm hand raise says hello

- Thumbs up says yes

- Close-fisted hand raise says no

- Index finger raise says question

- Index and little finger raised in close fist (rock and roll style) says awesome.

- A wide grin will reveal the words ha ha

- Tilting away, outside the frame, says be right back

In his second tweet, Cameron Hunter revealed this function was created using Snaplensstudio software. He claims the lens can be used with Zoom, Google Hangouts, Slack etc. He details the process in the tweet-thread mentioned above.

People were thrilled to see the program and queries flooded in. Someone asked if it can work with two people present in the frame, to which Hunter said yes, that was possible.

Some people even came up with suggestion like adding new gestures or possible applications in museums and virtual tours. However, some pointed out the cultural problems associated with the issue. The ‘awesome’ gesture means something offensive in Italian culture, whereas the 'yes' and ‘no’ gestures are equivalent to giving someone the finger in Britain and Pakistan.