SkinTrack Turns Your Skin Into a Smart Watch TouchPad

Skintack could be the best and probably smartest mobile phone technology to hit the shelves. The biggest smart watch touchpad is actually in 'your' hands. Because a new technology is being developed and it can turn your skin into a smart watch screen.

The technology is called SkinTrack. It uses a 'signal-emitting' ring which can send electric signals. It also designed with a 'sensing' band which receives the signal and it is directly attached to watch.

According to the Carnegie Mellon University, SkinTrack is developed by Future Interfaces Group (FIG). FIG is an an interdisciplinary research lab within the Human-Computer Interaction under the same university.

Their goal is to enchance human and computer interaction, to make it fluid, intuitive and powerful. In their website, FIG described how SkinTrack really works.

The ring emits the AC signal which the sensing wristband receives. They said it is a compact, non-invasive, low-cost and low-powered approach to technology. Their dream is to go beyond the confines of the screen and to enable commands by just tapping on your skin.

For Carnegie, it was a daunting task to develop since previous attempts with similar concept proved to be too complicated. But Skintrack is the opposite of that.

"SkinTrack, by contrast, requires only that the user wear a special ring, which propagates a low-energy, high-frequency signal through the skin when the finger touches or nears the skin surface" said Carnegie in a statement.

"The great thing about SkinTrack is that it's not obtrusive; watches and rings are items that people already wear every day" said Yang Zhang, a Ph.D. student in the same report. Gierad Laput, another Ph.D. student said this technology is brought about by the current smart watch touchpads which are relatively small.

With SkinTrack there will be a larger interface and more room to perform commands with the use of the extended 'screen' in your arms and your finger to control it. The SkinTrack is mainly governed by electromagnetic waves which tell the watch and the smart watch what to do.

According to Carnegie the SkinTrack have 99 percent accuracy and can be used in various applications such as a game controller.

The technology will be presented to the Conference on Human Factors in Computing and there is no announcement yet as to when this technology will be available.