English: Yuriy Kozachuk, a marketing engineer in the Intel Perceptual Computing Group, uses a 3-D camera mounted atop an all-in-one computer screen to demonstrate hand gesture control.

For more: Making Computers More Human Perceptual computing to bring natural human responses to machine interactions.

In an attempt to unshackle people from the archaic keyboard and mouse, technology companies are bringing human-like senses to computing devices so they can understand speech, gestures and touch.

Momentum toward new computing interactions has been gathering for a decade. People began using motion sensors to interact with gaming consuls such as Microsoft's Xbox and the Nintendo Wii. Touchscreen interfaces to control smartphones, tablets and Ultrabooks became commonplace. Voice recognition technologies such as Siri allowed people to tell their devices what to do. Yet despite these advances, the keyboard and mouse have remained ubiquitous.

“Control, Alt, Delete . . . that’s not natural," said Mooly Eden, vice president of Intel Israel. "We should be able to communicate with a computer the same way we communicate with one another."