Say hello to a new device that turns your arm to a smart touchpad

A team of scientists from Carnegie Mellon University has developed a new wearable technology that can turn your lower arm into a smartwatch touchpad.
Called "SkinTrack" and developed by the Human-Computer Interaction Institute's Future Interfaces Group, the new system allows for continuous touch tracking on the hands and arms.

It also can detect touches at discrete locations on the skin, enabling functionality similar to buttons or slider controls.
"The great thing about SkinTrack is that it's not obtrusive like smartwatches that people wear every day," said Yang Zhang, PhD student in HCII.
Previous "skin to screen" approaches have employed flexible overlays, interactive textiles and projector or camera combinations that can be cumbersome.
"SkinTrack", by contrast, requires only that the user wear a special ring which propagates a low-energy, high-frequency signal through the skin when the finger touches or nears the skin surface.
A major problem with smartwatches and other digital jewelry is that their screens are so tiny. "Not only is the interaction area small but your finger actually blocks much of the screen when you're using it," added Gierad Laput from HCII and part of the research team.
"SkinTrack" makes it possible to move interactions from the screen onto the arm, providing much larger interface.