The age of the remote control seems almost over, and we may soon have a new way of watching TV.

You could be able to control your TV with a wave of your hand thanks to gesture recognition technology being developed by a Tel Aviv-based electronics company in collaboration with Microsoft.

Inon Beracha, CEO at PrimeSense, explains that the idea is to give machines the ability to 'see.'

"PrimeSense technology essentially enables consumer devices to see and understand the environment. The environment can be users, and the environment can be also objects. Essentially, by digitizing the topography in real-time, we enable the machines to see."

The remote control would be obsolete - no buttons to push, no cords to trip over and a gaming, computing or viewing experience entirely controlled by your movements.

"Our vision at PrimeSense is seeing actually this technology ubiquitous in every consumer device, so not just in the living room, the smart home where the air conditioning or the lighting system are aligning themselves to where the people are in the room so it's like green technology, also for robots that are strolling around the house and cleaning the house and avoid bumping into devices, alarm systems that actually when the alarm, before it turns on and calls 911 it knows whether the cause for the alarm was a dog or a cat or a real person that came into our lives or into our home."

PrimeSense's 3D motion sensor has been installed in new gaming consoles, freeing players from wands, controllers or mats.

It's being called a breakthrough for gaming and could ease consumers into a remote-free future.

"The particular idea came out from the founders, five founders that were gamers. They were looking for new ways to interact with games. They were not happy with the game pad. This was before the Wii was introduced and they were thinking about ideas and they came with the idea of 3D sensing. They were not familiar with the technology so they decided to inquire and they found out that whatever was there was not cost effective enough and performance was not good enough to be available for, to be attractive for the consumer market, so they decided to invent their own system."

Beracha's vision of total technological change may be a few years off yet, but for now, the sensor's place in gaming may bring about the revolution PrimeSense is aiming for.
 
That is, if you can get used to channel surfing with a flick of your wrist.