Smartwatches are looking more and more like the devices we see in science fiction movies. And today we come across the LumiWatch, a smartwatch that projects a touchscreen onto your arm, with which - of course - you can interact.
A group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (United States) has just presented LumiWatch, a smartwatch that projects a touchscreen onto your arm. This prototype projects an interactive surface area onto the user's arm, allowing them to interact with the watch by touching their own skin. In the video below you can see how this interface works on the body: you swipe your finger to the left to unlock the watch and applications are shown along the arm.
The LumiWatch can project a 1024 × 600 pixel image along the entire length of the arm. Inside it has a laser projector with 15 lumens, a quad-core processor running Android 5.1, 768MB of RAM, 4GB of flash memory, and a 740 mAh lithium-ion battery with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. According to its creators, the watch can last up to one hour in continuous projection and, with intermittent use, they anticipate the battery will last about a whole day. The prototype model is quite bulky, with a 50-millimeter case, larger than the 42-millimeter aluminum case of the Apple Watch.
One of the difficulties of the LumiWatch has been projecting an image onto a surface as irregular as an arm or hand, which is not completely flat, often resulting in distortion. Therefore, the watch detects when the user uses the swipe to the left to unlock the mechanism. It then tracks the user's finger to calibrate and optimize the projection angle so the interface can be used. The researchers estimate the prototype model would cost around $600, although for now there are no plans to put it on sale.
Official site: LumiWatch
