My recent Insight Media Mobile Display Report articles on the 2010 CTIA Wireless Show in Las Vegas covered some pretty interesting developments in mobile device displays and user interfaces. Some of the demonstrations at the show were pretty “out there” such as NTT Docomo’s eye controlled earphones. However, still more advanced display and user interfaces are under development.
An especially compelling example of some recent efforts is exemplified by the work of Chris Harrison and his colleagues at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and at Microsoft Research. Their work entitled “Skinput: Appropriating the Body as an Input Surface” (Note: PDF file) was recently presented at the CHI 2010 Conference (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems).
The Skinput technology uses a novel array of electro-mechanical sensors worn as an armband to resolve the location of finger taps on the arm and hand. In several proof of concept applications the authors demonstrate the use of the Skinput technology as a computer input device. In one intriguing application, the authors utilize a picoprojector to display user interface areas on the user’s forearm and hand that can then be touched/tapped to initiate commands. This form of user interface seems pretty far fetched but the authors have done a good job of developing, evaluating and demonstrating applications of the technology.
To obtain a clearer understanding of Skinput, it’s helpful to look over a few pictures. The photo below from the authors CHI paper shows the wearable, bio-acoustic sensing array armband.
The integration of the picoprojector with the input sensing armband is illustrated in the photo below. In this application demonstration the picoprojector is used to display input features on the user’s forearm that are then tapped, detected by the armband sensor, and then processed to enter commands to the computing device.
The authors have demonstrated a variety of projected input modalities including the keypad style example shown in the photo below.
The authors provide a good deal of data in their paper concerning the classification accuracy of their Skinput technology for a variety of input gestures. The classification accuracy obtained was generally relatively good suggesting that this form of input technology may in fact be usable in future mobile devices.
Although the photos above suggest how the Skinput sensor works, how the sensor can be combined with a picoprojector, and how the combination might be applied in a mobile device application, the video below provides a more descriptive and convincing demonstration of the technology.
As the market importance of mobile devices continues to grow and as designers work to incorporate more capable and attractive display and user interface capabilities in mobile devices, rapidly evolving technologies such as Skinput and picoprojectors will likely be brought into widespread application.
The industry standing of display and input technologies is clearly reflected in the program for this year’s Society for Information Display (SID) Display Week which will include a new market focus conference on “The Future of Touch & Interactivity.” The SID Market Focus Conference Series at Display Week 2010 will take place on May 26th and 27th at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle.
I will be at SID Display Week 2010 in Seattle this month and look forward to seeing you there to hear about and discuss the latest technical and business innovations. If you would like to meet with WRT Associates at Display Week you can call +1-970-219-8800 or drop us an email. In the display industry that is currently seeing serious growth in market interest and sales of mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad, and emerging products with advanced user interfaces such as Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal gestural gaming interface, we expect there will be many interesting new developments.
