Researchers have created an intelligent thimble that sits at the end of your finger and allow the user to interact with objects in a virtual three-dimensional world.
Anh Nguyen and Amy Banic from the University of Wyoming in Laramie have created the 3DTouch thimble that can sense its position accurately in three-dimensions and respond to a set of preprogrammed gestures that allow the user to interact with objects in a virtual three-dimensional world.
MIT Technology Review says that Nguyen and Banic have created a cheap device that works as a universal input for any computing device. The 3DTouch sits on the end of a finger and is equipped with inbuilt 3D accelerometer, a 3D magnetometer and 3D gyroscope and allows the data from each sensor to be compared. It also has an optical flow sensor that measures the movement of the device against a two-dimensional surface, similar to that inside of a mouse.
The device is connected by a wire to an Arduino controller which combines the data from all the sensors and is then streamed to a conventional laptop. "This wired connection later could be replaced by a wireless solution using a pair of XBee modules," researchers said.
Nguyen and Banic have also added a number of mouse-like gestures that allow a user to interact with 3-D objects, through selecting and dragging them. They have added gestures like a finger tap, a double tap and a press gesture. Researchers say that the device will be relatively cheap but have not mentioned a price.
The researchers say that it will work with existing devices such as a desktop PC or a Cave Autonomous Virtual Environment. In the future, 3DTouch could also help in interacting with virtual reality devices like Oculus Rift and Google cardboard.
Source: MIT