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Finger-Tracking Tech Turns Your Arm Into A Touchpad (gizmag.com)
New submitter Keys of Cars quotes a report from Gizmag: Smartwatches may be handy, but their tiny touchscreens can easily be obscured by your fingers as you're using them on the device. As a result, we've seen various attempts to move the control surface. One of the latest, Carnegie Mellon University's SkinTrack system, moves it onto your hand and lower arm. The strap of the smartwatch features multiple electrodes, which detects a ring that is worn on your "control finger" (on your non smartwatch-wearing arm) that emits a high-frequency electrical signal. When your finger, specifically the ring, approaches and/or touches the arm with the watch, the high-frequency electrical signal is propagated through the skin. It will work even if your skin is covered with clothing! The system is reportedly 99% accurate, and can locate touches with a mean error of 7.6mm. SkinTrack was used to control games, scroll through lists, zoom in and out of maps, draw pictures, and operate an onscreen number pad.
Considering apples watch screen is 38x42mm 7.6mm mean accuracy seems pretty ineffective.
...just my arm? ;D
The system is reportedly 99% accurate, and can locate touches with a mean error of 7.6mm
That seems pretty horrible, to be honest.
Your big toe probably has better accuracy than that.
The first link in the summary links to a different technique, called "Finger I/O", which uses sonar and is from the University of Washington. The link next to the headline ( http://www.gizmag.com/skintrac... ) properly goes to the thing that the article is about; which is electric & from CMU.
I figure the future will use hand gestures recognized by 3D triangulation + image recognition. You'll hold your hand over your screen and manipulate objects as if conducting an orchestra.
Or Google-Glass-like viewing instead of a hand-held screen.
A guy who was jailed in the 70's and released recently was taken back by people "talking to themselves" while walking down the street. Soon they'll also be conducting invisible orchestras.
Unless direct brain inserts mature faster.
Table-ized A.I.
It's a lamer, less accurate power glove?
So, now not only need to keep track of and charge a phone and a watch, but also jave to remember to charge a ring as well?
Smartwatches may be handy
No.
That is all.
Unless you love being spammed by notifications, I don't see any use for them.
They'd better work on making smartwatches useful for something first, and then fix the control scheme.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
I give a shit about being able to detect touch on my arm, I can do that already, it's called nerves. What I want is to be able to detect touches on my 25.5" displays. I have two of them and I'd really love to convert them both to touch. If I could even find an overlay that size, it would cost minimum $200, and that's for just two point touch. Why are touch overlays so expensive, even IR ones? When will they get cheaper?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So, we enter an age where behavior of tech-tards and stone-cold crazy people will be pretty much indistinguishable from each other. People haphazardly walking along talking to themselves and spastically tapping their arms and hands like they are trying to "get the bugs off man! get the goddam bugs off! gaah!" is here. Cool.
San Francisco is going to be a hoot.
Strap a Wacom tablet to your arm. As a bonus, you can use it as a shield.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."