AuraRing Precisely Tracks Your Finger Movements
This ring and wristband combination can detect the precise location of someone’s index finger and continuously track hand movements.
It’s clear that the wearable device industry is growing, and consumers want a simple, intuitive, and unobtrusive way to control their electronics on the go. Many smartwatches already integrate at least some of that functionality, such as when you shake your Apple Watch to skip songs. But those are still very basic, and you’re not going to be typing out text messages by flopping your hand around. Fortunately, a new device called AuraRing may soon make it both practical and intuitive to perform complex tasks like drawing or typing.
AuraRing was developed by a team of researchers from the University of Washington. It’s a wearable device designed to track the movement of your finger in three-dimensional space. That would allow you to type out text messages, draw, interact with virtual buttons, and more. Rings with similar goals have been demonstrated in the past, but they were larger and didn’t provide nearly as much precision. AuraRing is compact and very accurate, thanks to its two-part design. The second part of the system is a wristband that dramatically improves precision, while also moving many of the bulky components to your wrist to improve comfort
The ring portion of AuraRing is an electromagnetic (EM) transmitter made from a coil of thin magnet wire, and can be powered by two small coin cell batteries for up to 17 hours. The wristband contains sensors that monitor fluctuations in the EM fields coming from the ring. Those sensors are capable of sensing the ring’s position in five axes: 3D space, yaw, and pitch. The position of the ring can then be sent wirelessly to a smartphone, computer, tablet, or any other device, where the data can be used to interact with virtual objects. AuraRing is capable of tracking finger position at the millimeter level, which is precise enough for most interactions. When combined with a virtual reality or augmented reality headset, users could have a seamless experience without traditional input methods.
More details can be found in the team's paper here.
