Digits: A Wrist-Worn Gloveless Sensor

From Oct. 7 to 10 in Cambridge, Mass., Microsoft researchers attending UIST 2012; the 25th Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology; will be sharing projects and ideas with an international gathering of scientists and practitioners focused on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

Microsoft Research’s work in "HCI" helps the company achieve its long-term vision of creating intuitive interfaces that not only revolutionize interactions between humans and computers, but that also empower people from of all walks of life. Digits is one of several research projects presented during UIST 2012 that help further this vision.

Mobility always has been one of the research team’s goals. To enable ubiquitous 3-D spatial interaction anywhere, Digits had to be lightweight, consume little power, and have the potential to be as small and comfortable as a watch. At the same time, Digits had to deliver superior gesture sensing and “understand” the human hand, from wrist orientation to the angle of each finger joint, so that interaction would not be limited to 3-D points in space. Digits had to understand what the hand is trying to express, even while inside a pocket.

Digits is meant to be a general-purpose interaction platform, and to prove the utility of the technology, both the Digits technical paper being presented during UIST 2012 and an accompanying video present interactive scenarios using Digits in a variety of applications, with particular emphasis on mobile scenarios, where it can interact with mobile phones and tablets.

via Microsoft Research