How Scientists Made This Ordinary Phone a Touchless Interface

When touchscreens come to the first iPhone , they felt like a marvelous new way of life to interact with the devices in our hands . Dirty or wet or gloved fingers reveal the limitations of the touchscreen , though , and touchless user interface may be closer than you think — a lightly modified average speech sound can detect hand gestures through interference of radio waves .

investigator at the University of Washington look a veritable touchscreen phone and attach a circuit gameboard with four minor cringle antennae . It ’s bulkier than a silklike nude speech sound , for sure , but not much big than some monstrosity that slip by for phone cases . These antennae observe interference in the radio waves that phones uses to communicate with cell towers .

“ When the exploiter be active their hand around the fluid phone,”write the authors , “ their pelt , muscleman , and bones sham the quality of the propagation way by absorbing or contemplate part of the sign . ” By take apart how each of the four antenna receive the signal , the earphone can name between wiretap in eight locations , four hover gesture , and swipes in two focal point .

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With an mean accuracy of 87 per centum , it ’s still clunkier than we ’ve fall to carry from our phones . But this is pretty preliminary research that will be presented at auser interface conferencenext month . It ’s fascinating that tinkering with even relatively low - tech component can create a whole interface . [ viaNew Scientist ]

picture via Zhao et al .

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