Power in the palm of your hands
15 Oct 2012
Forget the TV remote and the games controller, now you can control anything from your mobile phone to the television with just a wave of your hand.
Researchers at Newcastle University and Microsoft Research Cambridge (MSR) have developed a sensor the size of a wrist-watch which tracks the 3-D movement of the hand and allows the user to remotely control any device.
Mapping finger movement and orientation, it gives the user remote control anytime, anywhere – even allowing you to answer your phone while it's still in your pocket and you're walking down the street.
Being presented this week at the 25th Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, 'Digits' allows for the first time 3-D interactions without being tied to any external hardware.
It has been developed by David Kim, a MSR funded PhD from Newcastle University's Culture Lab; Otmar Hilliges, Shahram Izadi, Alex Butler, and Jiawen Chen of MSR Cambridge; Iason Oikonomidis of Greece's Foundation for Research & Technology; and Professor Patrick Olivier of Newcastle University's Culture Lab.
''The Digits sensor doesn't rely on any external infrastructure so it is completely mobile,'' explains David Kim, a PhD student at Newcastle University.
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