A group of researchers has created “Skinput,” a device that turns your body into a touchscreen by sensing movements in your skin and muscle. Witness the future of the mobile – literally in the palm of your hand.
Researchers Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research are presenting a paper about Skinput next month at the Computer-Human Interaction conference, and have posted the paper and a cool video on their project site.
Researcher Chris Harrison writes:
Appropriating the human body as an input device is appealing not only because we have roughly two square meters of external surface area, but also because much of it is easily accessible by our hands (e.g., arms, upper legs, torso). Furthermore, proprioception (our sense of how our body is configured in three-dimensional space) allows us to accurately interact with our bodies in an eyes-free manner. For example, we can readily flick each of our fingers, touch the tip of our nose, and clap our hands together without visual assistance. Few external input devices can claim this accurate, eyes-free input characteristic and provide such a large interaction area.
