An Invisible Touch for Mobile Devices

It seems easy enough to control mobile devices with just a touch of the screen, but research is finding that requires no use of a touch screen or keyboard to be functional. An "imaginary interface" is implemented during phone conversation by the speaker using hand or finger movements by tracing shapes into the air. "The idea of interacting with computers through hand gestures is nothing new.

Sony already sells EyeToy, a video camera and software that capture gestures for its PlayStation game consoles; Microsoft has developed a more sophisticated gesture-sensing system, called Project Natal, for the Xbox 360 games console." Andy Wilson, a senior researcher at Microsoft, notes that the interface draws on the fact that people naturally use their hands to explain spatial ideas. "That's a quite powerful concept, and it hasn't been explored," he says. "I think they're onto something."

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