Aug. 16, 2006 — A fingertip device has been developed to recognize the wearer's hand gestures and even sense the surface texture of an object the person may be touching.
The digitizer could work to input information without the need of a keyboard. It could come in handy for gaming, where it could be used to imitate squeezing a trigger. And it can be worn to paint on a screen just by moving a finger through the air.
The Fingertip Digitizer, developed by mechanical engineer Young-Seok Kim and Thenkurussi Kesavadas, director of University of Buffalo's Virtual Reality Lab, could be used for everything from inputting information into a computer or PDA to transferring the physical characteristics of an object to a computer for design purposes.
"With this device a computer, cell phone or computer game could read human intention more naturally," said Kesavadas. "Eventually the Fingertip Digitizer may be used as a high-end substitute for a mouse, a keyboard or a joystick."
According to Kim and Kesavadas, other gesture-recognition devices available on the market are able to sense movement but not force. And although there are several force-feedback, also known as "haptic," devices available, none of them can measure details of dynamic fingertip activities, including acceleration and inertia.
"Our digitizer bridges the contact and non-contact input strategy," said Kim. "We keep track of everything happening on your fingertip."
After all, said Kesavadas, the fingertip is the most intuitive interface humans already posses. We use it to point, push buttons, touch objects and sense textures.
The duo's device is equipped with three sensors to give it a broad range of function. A position sensor keeps tracks of where the digitizer is in a three-dimensional space and captures its direction. An accelerometer gauges speed, and a force sensor at the tip measures pressure.
The information is captured by the sensors and fed by wires (a wireless system could be available in the next year)to a software system in a computer.
As a person wearing the devices moves her finger, the system tracks it using the acceleration and location data.
If she touches or traces around an object, the motion data is combined with the force-feedback information to determine the shape of the object. It will also know if the person is tapping on a table, scratching or snapping her fingers, for example.
"It's sleek, simple, and lightweight. Those are the three most amazing factors about it," said professor Jennifer Grey, who teaches drawing and painting at California State University Long Beach.
Grey has helped test other haptic interfaces, but is frequently disappointed with how the devices constrain the whole body experience inherent to art.
"I envision a day when people can draw with metal in mid-air," she said.
Her wish may come true.
Kim and Kesavadas have filed a provisional patent application and say that once they get the system working wirelessly, they will move to shrinking the size to something that could potentially fit on a fingernail.
