SkinTrack From Carnegie Mellon Turns Your Arm Into A Smartwatch Touchpad
It is no doubt smartwatches are seeing a decline in demand. Smartwatches promised us a smartphone free way of accessing all our apps but they could not see the big drawback, the small 2.5inch display which made it cumbersome to use apps. The solution to this problem is soon on its way thanks to Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII). The team consisting of PhD students Gierad Laput and Yang Zhang and guided by Chris Harrison, assistant professor in the HCII have developed a gadget that turns your entire lower arm into a touchpad for your smartwatch.
The hardware and software solution titled SkinTrack consists of a ring and electrodes embedded in the smartwatch’s wrist strap. Once the user wears a special ring that propagates a low-energy, high frequency signal though the entire arm that is picked up by the electrode laden band which has horizontal and vertical electrodes that pick up those signals in x and y axis. The system can determine the finger touch with an accuracy of 99 percent. So what functions can the SkinTrack perform in a smartwatch, well almost everything and more. SkinTrack supports directional swipes, discrete touch, and continuous tracking. You can see the prototype in action in the video below where the team explains how SkinTrack can be used with a smartwatch.
While the technology is completely safe and can even work from underneath the sleeves of your worn clothes, it has some pitfalls. The technology fails when the arm is covered in sweat or when it is used for prolonged periods. The ring which you wear in your finger also needs a continuous electricity source. We hope to see this technology in implementation soon as it would make smartwatches cool again.
Source: SkinTrack Technology Turns Arm Into Smartwatch Touchpad - News - Carnegie Mellon University
The hardware and software solution titled SkinTrack consists of a ring and electrodes embedded in the smartwatch’s wrist strap. Once the user wears a special ring that propagates a low-energy, high frequency signal though the entire arm that is picked up by the electrode laden band which has horizontal and vertical electrodes that pick up those signals in x and y axis. The system can determine the finger touch with an accuracy of 99 percent. So what functions can the SkinTrack perform in a smartwatch, well almost everything and more. SkinTrack supports directional swipes, discrete touch, and continuous tracking. You can see the prototype in action in the video below where the team explains how SkinTrack can be used with a smartwatch.
While the technology is completely safe and can even work from underneath the sleeves of your worn clothes, it has some pitfalls. The technology fails when the arm is covered in sweat or when it is used for prolonged periods. The ring which you wear in your finger also needs a continuous electricity source. We hope to see this technology in implementation soon as it would make smartwatches cool again.
Source: SkinTrack Technology Turns Arm Into Smartwatch Touchpad - News - Carnegie Mellon University
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