Shashaank Mathur discusses a technology called Skinput that allows the skin to serve as a touch interface. Skinput uses bio-acoustic sensors in an armband to detect vibrations on the skin caused by finger taps. These taps are classified and can be used to control devices. Some applications include audio control, games, phone calls and browsing. Improvements are needed to miniaturize the sensors and allow for one-handed gestures.

1. Name: Shashaank Mathur
Roll No.: 113
Batch: B-2

2.  Skinput: Overview
 Touchscreen and skinput devices
 Need of skinput
 Functioning of skinput
 Working of Skinput
 Bio-Acoustics
 Processing
 Armband
 Software Specifications
 Other technologies

3.  Skinput is a collaboration between Chris
Harrison at Cambridge Mellon university and
Dan Morris at Microsoft’s research lab
 Touch screen gadgets have become popular
due to the advantage they come with
 Skinput turns body into touch screen interface

7.  Device with touch available.
 Certain drawbacks of these devices present.
 Some drawbacks are:
 Small contact area
 Less accurate interactions
 Cannot make button larger without using
primary benefit of small size.

8.  Primary functions are:
 Control audio devices
 Play games
 Make phone calls
 Navigate browsing systems
 Uses series of sensors to determine where user
tapped on skin

10.  Pico-Projector
 A very small projector
 Used in compact gadgets
 E.g.. Spice Popcorn (mobile cum projector)

11.  Bio-Acoustics:
 Study of sound waves inside body
 When finger taps the skin, several distinct forms of
acoustics energy are produced
 Longitudinal Waves
 Transverse Wave
 The waveforms form the integral part of skinput

12.  Finger touch displaces skin
 Creates transverse wave (ripple)
 Sensor activated as wave passes under it.

13.  Finger impacts
 Creates longitudinal waves (compressive)
 Causes internal skeletal structure to vibrate.

15.  Each body part creates different type of
vibrations depending on:
 Bones
 Muscles
 Tendons
 These signal need to be sensed and worked
upon.
 This is done by wearing wave sensor armbands
 Sensing elements detect vibrations transmitted
through the body.

18.  Sensing elements detect vibrations transmitted
through the body.
 Contain five, specially weighted piezo films
 Responsive to a particular frequency range.

19.  Primary application, written in Java
 Three key functions
 Provides a live visualization of the data
 It segments inputs from the data stream into
independent instances (taps).
 Classified these input instances.

21.  Speech input
 Wearable computing
 Glove based input systems
 Smart fabric
 Sixth Sense

22.  Bulky armband cannot be carried everywhere.
 Research needs to be done to integrate it in
more devices

23.  Single handed gestures
 Taps with different parts of the finger
 Differentiating between materials and objects.
 Reduction in size of armband.

24.  Skin as input
 Wearable bio-acoustic sensors
 Skinput V/S Other technologies
 Improvements for skinput