When I was at CES 2009, I got to meet with Hillcrest Labs. I met them near the Kodak booth, where one of their Hillcrest remotes was being used on one of Kodak’s products. I had no idea who Hillcrest was, but when they showed me their motion control technology, they had my attention.

Hillcrest is responsible for Freespace technology, which requires no line of sight in order to work. That means that if you go into the other room to get a snack, you can still use the remote. As long as you can see the cursor on the television, it will work. Hillcrest also uses orientation compensation which can filter out any tremors for shaky-hand remote-control users.

Of course, what really got my attention is when the Hillcrest representative pulled out the Loop. More like kidnapped my attention, and then held it for ransom. As soon as I saw the Loop, I couldn’t stop taking pictures of it. Right now, the Loop is only a concept remote control for now, but it feels like it was plucked from the future. However, I can just see it sitting on my coffee table in a charger now.

What you see is a photo I took at CES, with my hand and the Hillcrest representative’s hand grabbing onto the Loop. They can use that picture on their ads if they want to, because I think that picture says a thousand words about how Hillcrest will take remote controls into the future.