July 17, 2007 — It won’t be long now before all electronic devices go "nano," and shrink to the size of frosted mini wheat square. You won’t know whether to turn it on or eat it. But the real question is: How do you press those teeny buttons?
One group of researchers wants to do away with the keyboard altogether. They’ve designed a wristwatch that recognizes hand gestures and uses them for touch-free control of electronic devices such as MP3 players, cell phones, and home appliances. The technology could also be used by a doctor to control a medical device during an operation.
Such a watch could help keep operating rooms sterile and make diminutive devices less silly.
"Apple’s iPod shuffle can be the size of a hearing aid, but the user controls would be awkward. Imagine people on the subway putting a finger in their ear canal to change a track," said Jungsoo Kim, a graduate research assistant at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Kim developed the watch with colleagues Jiasheng He, Kent Lyons and Thad Starner.
The Gesture Watch has five infrared sensors, four of which sense any hand motion that occurs above the watch. For example, if the user is wearing the watch on his left hand, he can move his right hand over the watch in an up or down, left or right, or circular motion. Different combinations of these movements communicate an action to the watch.
For example, sweeping the right hand once over the watch may mean "power on" a clockwise circular motion may mean "shuffle" and pausing the hand over the watch may mean, "power down."
