Dawn Of Alternate Touch-Screens: Now Convert Your Skin, Walls Into Touch Screen, Instantly!
Innovations in digital interfaces have now focussed on human skin, and walls
Walls which surround your home, office and your skin all across the body – these are two of the largest, most prominent real estate, which no one thought can be used for digital interactions.
Not anymore!
Researchers have now come up with some of the most sizzling innovations, which can trigger a new round of digital progress.
Now, your paint you wall, and convert into a digital touch screen; and open a smart watch, and make your skin work as a digital interface!
Paint Which Can Make Any Wall A Touchscreen
There are acres and acres of walls all over the world – walls in your home, in your office, in multiplex, in hospitals, in hotels, in airports.
What if a simple paint can convert these walls into a smart wall? Instantly?
Yang Zhang, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) will present a paper at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, wherein a conductive paint can transform any wall into a smart wall.
He calls it Wall++.
Chris Harrison, assistant professor at HCII says, “Walls are usually the largest surface area in a room, yet we don’t make much use of them other than to separate spaces, and perhaps hold up pictures and shelves.”, adding, “As the internet of things and ubiquitous computing become reality, it is tempting to think that walls can become active parts of our living and work environments.”
Here is a video, explaining the concept:
Using simple techniques such as conductive paint and electromagnetic sensors, any dumb wall can be now converted into smart-wall – It can detect gestures, hand movements and signals from electrical devices.
As per initial estimates, $20 per square meter would be the expense to convert any dumb wall into smart wall.
Here is the research paper, called “Wall++: Room-Scale Interactive and Context-Aware Sensing..”
Convert Your Skin Into TouchScreen, With A Smart Watch!
Your skin is something, which is still relatively under-used (when it comes to digital interface).
If you think of it, then at the max we are using our fingers to scroll, tap and click screens. Maybe eyes for smart glasses.
Nothing more.
But soon, things can change.
Image this scene from a sci-fi movie: You swipe your smartwatch into action, and suddenly, a new digital interface, a touch screen develops on your arm and hands. You can check apps on that, book movie tickets and chat with friends.
Swipe right, and the interface vanishes.
This fictional scene would be soon a reality, as another set of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new smartwatch, called LumiWatch, which can do the same.
This watch can project an interface up to 40 square centimeters in size, which is roughly 5-times the size of a standard smart watch.
The prototype of LumiWatch contains logic board, projector, depth sensor, metal enclosure, and battery; and is powered with Android 5.1, and:
- 15 lumen scanned-laser projector
- Continuous 2D finger tracking
- Qualcomm 1.2 Ghz quad-core CPU
- 768MB of RAM
- 4GB flash memory
- 740 mAh lithium ion battery with Bluetooth & Wi-Fi
Here is the research paper, titled: “LumiWatch: On-Arm Projected Graphics and Touch Input.”
Do let us know your views and opinions on these touch screen innovations, by commenting right here!
