skin track;turning your skin to a touchscreen.

A lab at Carnegie Mellon University has made a device that turns the wearer's skin to act as a touchscreen. The Future Interfaces Group, part of the university, have created 'SkinTrack', which "enabled continuous tracking on the skin". A ring, worn on the non-watch hand, emits a "high frequency AC signal" that connect to a sensing wristband, much like the strap of a traditional smartwatch, which is fitted with electrodes.When the ring finger touches the watch-wearing hand, a signal is sent to the watch and allows wearers to navigate their device using their skin. A number of commands are also possible - you can sign documents, for example, and tracing particular letters will bring up particular apps, for example ('E' for email or 'F' for Facebook). Users can also drag apps off of their device and onto their skin, creating "spatial shortcuts", as well as play games, using their finger and arm as controls. The team hopes that it could be used in future development of smartwatches because it is "compact, non-invasive, low-cost and low-powered." The team envision the technology being integrated into future smartwatches, supporting rich touch interactions beyond the confines of the small touchscreen. read more at wired.co.uk

SkinTrack: Using the Body as an Electrical Waveguide for Continuous Finger Tracking on the Skin.

SkinTrack is a wearable system that enables continuous touch tracking on the skin. It consists of a ring, which emits a continuous high frequency AC signal, and a sensing wristband with multiple electrodes. Due to the phase delay inherent in a high-frequency AC signal propagating through the body, a phase difference can be observed between pairs of electrodes .SkinTrack measures these phase differences to compute a 2D finger touch coordinate. Our approach can segment touch events at 99% accuracy, and resolve the 2D location of touches with a mean error of 7.6mm