SKINPUT TECHNOLOGY

Guided By : P. D. Khambre

By : Fenil Wakawala

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INTRODUCTION

Screens are smaller, cameras are more ubiquitous, touch screen is everywhere.

Mobility , flexibility , responsiveness are getting more demands.

Microsoft puts forword a new flesh-control input technology called “SKINPUT”.

1ST public appearance was at Microsoft’s TechFest 2010

What is “Skinput”?

Skinput is technology that appropriates the human body for acoustic transmission.

Its allows the skin to be used as input surface, allows to interact with body in eye free manner.

Was devloped by Chris Harrison(Carnegie Mello University),Microsoft Research.

Mechanical phenomenon :

As the skin taps on the skin; acoustic energies are foemed.

Two forms of the waves are formed: 1. Transverse. 2. Longitudinal.

Sensors are activated by the waves moving underneath it.

Transverse waves formed moves outward form the point of contact

Transverse waves formed at soft part of the skin is of higher amplitude than the bony part of skin.

Cont…

Some energy is transmitted inward, toward the skeleton.

These are longitudinal waves; excites the bane.

This excitation vibrates soft tissues surrounding the entire length of the bone, resulting in new longitudinal waves that propagate outward to the skin.

The sensor is activated as these waves hits underneath it.

Sensing : Instead of a single sensing

element with a flat response curve, an array of highly tuned vibration sensors are used.

Bio –acoustic sensor, its employed with small, cantilevered piezo films.

Cont…….

Cantilever is adjusted in the resonating frequency.

Adjustment done by adding weight.

Irresponsive to singal parallel on the skin; reduce the noise due other signal.

About the sensor design…

relatively inexpensive.

Can be manufactured in a very small form factor, rendering it suitable for inclusion in future mobile devices.

Requirements :

An acoustic detector to detect sound vibrations.

It uses a microchip-sized pico projector to display menu.

It needs bluetooth connection.

Prototype armband :

The design : The prototype features has two arrays of

five sensing elements, incorporated into an armband form.

Each sensor array is sensible to particular set of frequencies:

1. Upper – low frequencies – fleshier.

2. Lower – high frequencies – denser bones.

The processing : Employ a mackie onyx 1200f audio

interface to digitally capture data form the ten sensors.

Each channel is sampled at 5.5 khz. This is connected to conventional

desktop computer , where a thin client written in C interfaced with the device using the ASLO protocol.

Key functions : This program provides a live visuization

of the data from the ten sensors. Its segments inputs from the data

stream into independent instances. Classifies these input instances.

The audio stream is segmented into individual taps using an absolute exponential average of all ten channels.

Analysis :

Experimental conditions :

Fingers (Five Locations)

Whole Arm (Five Locations)

Forearm (Ten Locations)

BMI effects:

1. BMI –Body mass index.2. to assess how these variations affected our sensing accuracy.3. the participants with the three highest BMIs(29.2, 29.6, 31.9) produced the three lowest average accuracies.

Advantages : The projected interface can appear

much larger than it ever could on a device’s screen.

Arm can be brought closer to face (or vise versa ) to see the display close up.

colour contrast can be adjusted by dimming the light so that a better picture will be visible if skin and the text are too similar in color during daylight.

conclusion : The technology itself is intriguing , and

have more application other than always avaibility.

Skinput is very intersting technology . But its fate will ultimately depend on how committed Microsoft is to making it a commercial reality and how soon.