According to the research team, previous ‘skin to screen’ approaches have employed flexible overlays, interactive textiles and projector/camera combinations. SkinTrack, by contrast, only requires the user to wear a ring which propagates a low energy, high frequency signal through the skin when the finger touches or nears the skin surface.
When the finger gets near to the skin or touches the skin, that signal propagates through the skin. By using electrodes, it’s possible to pinpoint the source of those electromagnetic waves.
“The great thing about SkinTrack is that it’s not obtrusive – watches and rings are items that people already wear every day,” said researcher Yang Zhang.
One of the issues with smartwatches and similar devices is the small interaction area. “SkinTrack makes it possible to move interactions from the screen onto the arm, providing a much larger interface,” said Chris Harrison, assistant professor in the university’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute.
The researchers found they could determine when the finger was touching the skin with 99% accuracy and could resolve the location of the touches with a mean error of 7.6mm. Both figures are said to compare well with other on body finger tracking systems and to approache ‘touchscreen like’ accuracy.
