Industrial Consultancy & Sponsored Research (IC&SR) , IIT Madras
Magic Thumb: Finger Worn Gesture Controlled Bluetooth Keyboard
and Mouse
Technology Category/Market
- Wearable Devices
- Sensors
Applications – Consumer Electronics, Automotive, Healthcare
Market – The gesture recognition and touchless sensing market is projected to reach USD 37.6 billion by 2026 with a CAGR of 22.6% from 2021- 2026.
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Problem Statement
- Wearable devices are now being extensively researched and used for various applications. These devices not only perform many basic computing functions, akin to laptops and smartphones, but may also perform unique health-tracking services.
- Further, with respect to use as a keyboard, the wearable devices conventionally rely on a tap-kind input or present a virtual keyboard allowing a user to provide input thereby allowing a user the ease to wirelessly access a user device such as a laptop, computer, tablet etc.
- Therefore, exists a need for a finger worn device that is compact, is capable of operating both a mouse and a keyboard and recognizes air gestures drawn by the user with a greater accuracy for an improved user experience.
Technology
- The technology is a finger worn device (Fig. 1) that is controlled by hand gestures with capability of being operated as a mouse and a keyboard for various electronic devices.
- The device comprises of a sensor housing configured to be placed at distal phalanx of a finger of a user and is connected to electronic device via bluetooth.
- The sensor housing has motion sensor i.e sensor that can capture orientation and linear acceleration, and led above the finger nails and 3 buttons over the battery enclosure (Fig. 2). Further, it includes visual indicators configured to provide pairing indication of the finger-worn device as the mouse or the keyboard with the user device. Hence, this wearable gestural device is called magic thumb.
- Furthermore, the finger-worn device is configured to detect patterns drawn by the user in air using the motion sensor and transform the detected patterns into valid keyboard inputs by employing linear acceleration based peak sequencing technique.
Questions about this Technology?
Contact for Licensing
Research Lab
Prof. Kaushik Mitra
Department of Electrical Engineering
Intellectual Property
- IITM IDF Ref. 2208
- IN 438579 – Patent Granted
Technology Readiness Level
TRL- 3
Proof of Concept Stage