Talk about technology!
by: Cathal Kelly
In the future, you won’t need to carry a computer. You’ll only have to roll up your sleeve.
Researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University are developing a device that will project a touch screen onto the body – in most cases, your hand or forearm.
They call the technology “skinput.”
Lead researcher Chris Harrison makes his living turning everyday objects into touch screens. Currently available platforms allow users to projects screens onto tables and other flat surfaces.
Harrison points out that you can never find a table just when you need one, so he’s focusing on the one surface you can count on – yourself. The body provides “two square metres of external surface area” – depending on how often you hit the gym.
Skinput uses a (still clunky looking) armband that projects a touch screen onto the forearm and hand. Large tabs or push buttons flicker across your flesh.
The system works on acoustics. When you tap your forearm, acoustic signals are produced as your flesh ripples and your bones vibrate. Each strike makes a distinct acoustic impression, owing to bone density, the size and mass of your arm and the dampening effect of muscle tissue. Skinput’s software “listens” to each tap, and then assigns it to a location on the screen.
The researchers boast they can achieve 95 per cent accuracy using five key points on the arm and hand. For anyone who’s ever struggled one-handed with a smartphone, that sounds like a pretty decent rate.
In a video, Harrison shows users operating audio devices, dialling a phone and playing Tetris by sharply striking their arms and fingers. At this point, using Skinput for any serious length of time looks as if it would leave you aching.
According to Harrison, one of the advantages of this system is its intuitiveness. Everyone, he points out, can touch their thumb to their opposite wrist or snap their fingers without looking down.
The developers are not yet suggesting that skinput can replace a full keyboard – their most ambitious trial yet involves 10 strike points on the arm – but they do see it as a near-term replacement for iPods and smartphones that use dial pads and scrolling menus.
“This is cutting-edge technology and we really are seeing the future here,” Harrison told the Daily Mail. “The project is going very well and I think you’ll begin to see such interfaces emerge within the next five years.”
Skinput’s designers plan to debut the device in mid-April at a high-tech conference in Atlanta.
Read Article Here: http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/technology/article/775826–newest-computer-touch-screen-may-be-your-own-body?bn=1
Tags: News
