Researchers create wild skin-touch interface for tiny smart watches

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Future Interface group unveiled SkinTrack, the first skin-based wearable interface that overcomes tiny smartwatch screens by turning your forearm and the back of your hand into touch and gesture interfaces.

SkinTrack consists of a signal-emitting ring that you wear on your index finger and a sensing smartwatch band.

The band has four electrodes to measure the X and Y position of the ring. Not only does it measure position, the system computes the distance from the finger to each electrode (called the Phase) and uses that information to continuously tracks the finger’s motion in real time.

Together, the sensors can read discrete gestures and know, with up to 99% accuracy, where on the skin you’re touching.

To demonstrate, the Carnegie Mellon researchers built their own custom smartwatch prototype and showed how the tiny smart watch interface can virtually expand from almost the crook of the arm to the base of the fingers.

They built applications for navigating through smartwatch apps, pinning some to the virtual interface space on the skin, making phone calls, playing music, and even adding special gestures to launch functions on the smartwatch like writing an “A” on the skin to access the watch’s contact list.

One of the core benefits of SkinTrack is that a user can interact with watch apps without their finger blocking the tiny wearable screen. Just think what Apple could do if it built this into the next Apple Watch. Surely then the Apple Watch App ecosystem would explode. No more trying to squeeze an iPhone’s-worth of on-screen interactivity into a 1-inch display.

The core limitation appears to be that there’s nothing to look at on the skin. Some of the interactivity appears on the smartphone screen, but how are you supposed to remember where you virtually pinned that app on your forearm?

The researchers hope to see their technology integrated into future smartphones, but they will have to convince manufacturers to build the special ring and then convince consumers to wear them.

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