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Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have used electrodes to turn your skin into a touchpad extension for wearables like smartwatches. The SkinTrack system uses four pairs of electrodes embedded in the watchband, while a ring on your finger generates an electrical signal when you touch your arm. The electrodes use that signal to track your finger movements, and as a result, your arm or hand becomes a touchpad–and a much larger one that makes intricate commands much easier on a small device.
This already makes things like drawing and entering numbers look a dozen times easier than trying to get the corner of your fingertip to hit just the right way on a square-inch space on the actual device. Of course, hopefully, the next advance will be figuring out a way to ditch the sensor-tripping ring–or at least get more stylish companies to partner with it.
[H/T The Verge]
