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Wireless Keyboard... Without The Keyboard

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the input-this dept.

MindJob writes "Berkeley's Sensor & Actuator Center has developed a virtual keyboard that allows you to glue 10 tiny chips to your fingernails and type away anywhere. The chips are composed of tiny, battery powered MEMS, or Microelectromechanical Systems, that work by tracking the location of your fingers and transmitting via a low-powered radio to a nearby receiver that will work regardless of the computer platform."

7 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Uhrm... Security Issues? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4

    Low powered radio? Won't this cause a nice broadcast of your keystrokes (passwords, credit card details, personal emails) to whoever would like to decode them? It may be low powered and Im not sure on the range, but surely this is an issue?

  2. Here by monk · · Score: 3

    It think this might be what he was talking about.

    --
    [-- Trust the Monkey --]
  3. Hunt and Pecker! by Bios_Hakr · · Score: 3

    Can I put all 10 chips on one finger for my H&P typing?

    --
    I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
  4. how does this really work ..... by taniwha · · Score: 4
    Think about how we all type - we have to align our fingers with the keyboard - touch typists find the home positions tactilly on the keyboard and type relative to them, people like me who never learned to touch type have to look occasionally to orient their fingers every so often. It's also a mostly 2-d thing - you are typing onto a 2-d surface.

    Typing in the air has no frames of reference (unless you have some VR keyboard and goggles etc) and it's a 3-d sort of thing - no hard 2-d thing to stop your fingers at the end of very stroke.

    Instead I suspect it's probably getting close to the time when we can come up with a new typing metaphor - hopefully something a little easier on my wrists - maybe 'typing' with my arms relaxed in my lap or something. With something like this a form of virtual chord keyboard might work well too meaning we could get away from the positional locations of keys on a keyboard which might be more suited for virtual keyboards.

    Has anyone out there become proficient with a chord keyboard of some sort? can you type as fast or are you limited more by the time between chords?

    Of course with cool MEMS technology like this just think of the interesting musical instruments we can create!

  5. Why keyboards by dvduijn · · Score: 3

    Why bother about keyboards. Deaf people's sign language, and in particular the `hand alphabeth' seem to me tailormade for this application.
    If the patern-recognition software is so good it can make out which key you think you are pressing, making out what sign your hand is making by the relative position of the fingertips should be just as easy.

  6. it has to be said .... by jsm2 · · Score: 4

    (Altogether now ....)

    "I'm not entirely sure that I want my computer knowing where my fingers are at all times"

    Yes yes yes, sorry, and all that. I resisted the temptation to say that for at least a minute. Hate me.

    jsm

  7. A few Thoughts by dadith · · Score: 3

    I cant find the article, anyone has a Link?


    Anyway, these don't sound too practical. A Keyboard is just there laying in front of the computer. If I want to type something, I just do it. For those sensors I *always* have to put them on, that sounds way to cumbersome just to type a few words on the computer to answer an email or post a ./ article. Implanting them would be a solution, only then it is quite difficult to switch them off ... ;) BTW, Typing on an invisible Keyboard without any feedback from the Keys sounds difficult. Personaly I would at last need the layout to be printed on the surface, better add a few structures to it so I can still type without looking down, so simlating a Keyboard with it isn't too attractive (for me). But it would be nice for recognising gestrues. Windows Bluescreen? Now, I think *everyone* can think about a gesture that would be perfectly suited to reboot the computer in that case, can't you? This would have quite some interesting applications and I think there are other projects about that. I remember one that was designed to recognize gesture language using cameras. Of course you need to track more that just the Fingers (which would require a very high resolution camers). Maybe a combination would be useful.

    Hmmm, one camera focused to the Face, one (or two for some Kind of 3D) on the whole Body and these things on the Fingers and you put the action back into interaction ;)

    Ciao, Peter