They will be controlled not with a touchscreen, but with gestures around them, thanks to a new wireless sensor, which, among other things, also consumes minimal energy.
American researchers are developing a new technology that allows a "smart" mobile phone to be controlled not through a touchscreen, but with gestures around the phone, without the user touching it at all.
While some smartphones have already begun to integrate sensors that detect the user's movements through the device's camera, this feature has the disadvantage of consuming a lot of battery power and, in addition, the camera must always have a clear image of the user's hands.
Instead, the new technology is based on a new type of wireless sensors that consume minimal power and allow users to "train" their phone to recognize and respond to specific invisible gestures made near it.
The technology, developed by associate professors Matty Reynolds and Swetak Patel of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington, uses wireless signal transmission to sense gestures, meaning the phone doesn't need to "see" the user's hands with the help of a camera. Even if the device is in a pocket or bag, it can "catch" its owner's gestures.
"Today's smartphones have a multitude of sensors, from cameras to accelerometers and gyroscopes, that can detect the movement of the phone itself. We have developed a new type of sensor that uses the reflection of the phone's own wireless transmissions to sense nearby gestures, allowing users to interact with their phone even when they are not holding it, looking at the screen or touching it," said Matty Reynolds.
When someone talks on the phone or uses an internet application, the device transmits radio signals, thereby communicating with the antennas of the mobile network. When the user moves their hand in the space around the phone, their body reflects some of these radio signals back to the device.
The new sensor uses a series of embedded tiny antennas that pick up on these changes in the reflected signal and detect which gestures they correspond to. These are then translated into specific commands for the phone (e.g., mute or change song). Because wireless radio signals easily penetrate fabric or other materials, the system works even if the device is buried somewhere.
“In this way,” said Swetak Patel, “the entire space around the phone becomes a space for interacting with it, beyond the interface of a typical touchscreen.” Experiments so far with ten volunteers, who made 14 different gestures, have shown that the device can recognize them with an average accuracy of 87%, which can be improved further in the future.
The innovative technology, called SideSwipe, which can be easily integrated into existing smartphones, will be officially presented in early October at a computer science conference in Hawaii. The researchers have already obtained the relevant commercial patent for their discovery.
Source: protothema.gr
