Thumb-typing texts or emails on a smartphone’s keypad can be
excruciating. The touchscreen is uber sensitive, the keys are too small
and you spend more time correcting your mistakes — or the auto-correct
mistakes — than you do writing.
Computer scientists at Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
understand this. That’s why Christoph Amma and colleagues have created
an innovative “air-writing” glove system that allows users to draw
letters in the air with their hand.
The glove is equipped with accelerometers and gyroscopes that
detect hand movements. The system then identifies which letters are
being drawn and converts them into digital text, which can then be
wirelessly entered into an email, text message or other mobile apps.
The system uses pattern recognition software to interpret
gestures and is capable of recognizing approximately 8,000 words, along
with complete sentences. The only caveat? You have to “write” in
all-capital letters.
Currently, the model has an error rate of 11 percent, but that
drops to three percent once it identifies the user’s air-writing style.
Perhaps this might appeal to people with sloppy penmanship?
Amma hopes to shrink the sensors so they can fit into a smaller, more
practical application, like a wrist band. He even imagines a
gesture-tracking system small enough to fit into a smartphone — one that
could detect movements and process data, all in one.
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