This new wearable turns your arm into a smartwatch touchpad

While many people enjoy the idea of a smartwatch, a lot of them don’t like having such a tiny touch screen, especially those with larger fingers. Well, worry no more; the frustration is over.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have developed a wearable technology that lets users turn the skin on their lower forearm into a touchpad. Deemed SkinTrack, the wearable gives users a larger surface to input information or commands on the smart watch.

And unlike previous solutions that have attempted to use flexible overlays or a combination of a projector and camera, the new technology only requires users to wear a special ring on the index finger that creates a low-energy, high-frequency signal through the skin when a finger touches or nears the surface.

SkinTrack can be used as a game controller, to scroll through lists on smartwatches, to zoom in and out of onscreen maps, and to use a dial pad. The ring emits an electrical signal and connects with electrodes integrated into the strap of the smartwatch.

According to Gierad Laput, a graduate student at CMU and one of the researchers behind the project, SkinTrack works similarly to how cell towers triangulate signals to figure out the phone’s location. The ring also has a 99 percent accuracy reading when a finger touches the skin. By arranging the electrodes in the smartwatch a certain way, it can determine in real time where the finger was, tracking its movements on the arm and hand.

Before it can be commercialized, however, SkinTrack needs a few kinks to be worked out. Currently, the battery on the prototype ring runs out pretty quickly. And due to sweat and body motion, the electrical signals tend to change after the ring has been worn for long periods of time.

Laput noted that it may take a few years to develop SkinTrack to be accurate enough for anyone to use.

Source: ComputerWorld