While having smartwatches that have touch controls can be pretty cool, sometimes, the limited real estate of the wearable makes it hard to control. Researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University might have come upon a solution to this problem, not by creating bigger smartwatches, but by coming up with a prototype of a bracelet that can detect the user’s gestures through muscle movement. This will make hand gestures activated devices much easier and more robust.
The researchers at the Human-Computer Interaction group at the university have come up with a smartwatch strap that can visualize how you move your arms and wrists and apply them to commands that your wearable can do. The prototype is called Tomo and it has a series of electrodes in the strap that can actually send a small electrical signal though the arm of the person wearing it and then measure the strength coming out of the other side. The “image” of the inside of the arm will now be generated then eventually analyzed.
The technique is kind of similar (but less expensive) to the ones used in PET and CT scans, and it’s called the Electrical Impedence Technology. While the images are of course low-res (for now), it’s still helpful enough that a variety of hand and finger gestures can be analyzed and eventually applied to smartwatches. Since it is gesture related, you will be able to use it even in the dark and even when you’re wearing gloves.
However, since it’s still a prototype and a work in progress, there are still a few hiccups and stuff. For example, how a person wears the strap throws off the software’s accuracy in detecting the gestures. But we’re pretty sure they will eventually get to figure out these problems and someday, we’ll see Tomo applied in real life.
VIA: Gizmodo
