Gesture- and voice-activated user interfaces emerged as significant trends at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.

At the start of the show, the CEA, organisers of the event, claimed 2012 would be the “year of the interface”. According to the organisation, companies want to make operating devices a “seamless, natural experience” in which technology moves “into the background”.

On the heels of Apple’s Siri intelligent voice recognition system on its new iPhones, companies like Korea’s Samsung have now introduced face-, voice- and gesture-recognition to their new TVs.

Dubbed as “Smart Interaction”, Samsung’s system works in conjunction with an integrated camera that allows users to turn on the TV, access applications, surf the Web or video chat with friends.

An interesting development has emerged from the Swedish-based company, Tobil, which is attending CES for the first time to promote its Eye Tracking technology.

Users of PCs no longer have to use a mouse as sensors track the movement of the users’ eyes hundreds of times per second giving the impression the computer is reading their mind. The technology is already being used to help disabled people use computers.

For its part, Nuance Communications unveiled Dragon TV, a voice and natural language “understanding” platform for TV, device and set-top box manufacturers and service operators. Dragon TV allows people to find content by speaking channel numbers as well as station, show and movie names. They can search for content by actor and genre and stay connected via Twitter, Facebook and Skype.

An estimated 1,6 billion TVs will be connected to the Web by 2014, according to Strategy Analytics, and the broad spectrum of channels and media options available today are already nearly impossible to navigate with traditional TV remotes.

Consumers have more options and media than they are even aware of and still can’t find what’s on. Nuance hopes its technology will allow consumers to say virtually anything to find the content they’re looking for. For instance, people can say: