Posted: March 23, 2010

Skinput - appropriating the body as computer input surface

(Nanowerk News) Certainly not nanotechnology (yet) but you can clearly see where this could be going with nanoelectronic devices and sensors...
Skinput is a novel, non-invasive technology that appropriates the human body for acoustic transmission and allows the skin to be used as an input surface. Research findings on this always available, naturally portable, on-body finger input system will be presented at the next ACM Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference, CHI 2010.
skinput
Skinput
"Skinput: Appropriating the Body as an Input Surface" will be presented by Chris Harrison of Carnegie Mellon University and Desney Tan and Dan Morris of Microsoft Research on Monday, April 12, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Appropriating the human body as an input device is appealing not only because we have roughly two square meters of external surface area, but also because much of it is easily accessible by our hands (e.g., arms, upper legs, torso). Furthermore, proprioception (our sense of how our body is configured in three-dimensional space) allows us to accurately interact with our bodies in an eyes-free manner. For example, we can readily flick each of our fingers, touch the tip of our nose, and clap our hands together without visual assistance. Few external input devices can claim this accurate, eyes-free input characteristic and provide such a large interaction area.
Source: ACM / Chris Harrison