SKINPUT

Skinput

Turn your body into a touch scream

1.       One day we might take your phone calls, turn on our MP3 player, play games, and, who knows, maybe even open our front doors by simply tapping our fingers on our skin. At least, that’s the hope of researchers Dan Morris and Disney Tan at Microsoft, and Chris Harrison at Carnegie Mellon university, who are developing a technology called skin put(skin input) that will turn our skin into touch screens.

2.       Skin put works by detecting the ultra-low frequency sounds that are produced when we tap different parts of our skin.it takes advantage of the fact that mechanical vibrations travel differently through our bodies depending on where they originate from, as different locations on our bodies produce vibrations. The skin put software listens for the vibrations, and then turns them into instructions for devices.

3.       To use skin put, you attach an armband that has a small projector in it to your upper arm. The projector beams graphics onto your foream.an acoustic detector in the armband then determines which graphic you touched. Using wireless technology like Bluetooth, the information can be transmitted to devices like cellphones and laptops.

4.        Harrison explains that the motivation for skin put stems from the increasingly small size of today’s mobile devices. He notes that the human body is an appealing input device because it has roughly 21 square feet of external surface area-much of it easily accessible to our hands (e.g., arms, upper legs, torso).furthermore, while we usually have to look at our handheld devices in order to operate them, we can accurately interact with our bodies in an eyes-free manner. We can easily touch our palms or press or two middle fingers together without looking at each part.

5.       The potential applications of skin put are endless. Consider, first the everyday situations where it would be convenient to control devices simply by touching specific point on your body. You’re cooking dinner. Someone calls you and your hands are covered in food. What if instead of racing to clean your hands before the caller hangs up, you could simply answer your phone by touching your thumb and forefinger together? or, you’re at the gym and you’re on the treadmill. A song comes on you MP3 player that you’d rather skip. Instead of having to stop the treadmill, take out your player, and press buttons or spin a wheel, you simply tap your arm and continue running.

6.       Then there is the incredible potential of this technology to transform the lives of the disabled or visually-impaired by allowing them to control devices simply by tapping their arms. Skin put could also take the gaming experience to a new level.

7.       Skin put is still in the research phase.it will be years before it conceivably becomes available on the market and even then, there’s no guarantee it actually will. But something like it will. Keyboards and mice work just fine when you’re sitting at a desk using your computer. But as we come to rely more and more on digital devices in our everyday lives (and increasingly use them in situations where our hands are otherwise occupied such as while driving)it’s certain that something like skin put will be the interface of the future.