Advertisment

Type on virtual keyboard floating in air

author-image
Soma Tah
New Update

TAIWAN, CHINA: ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute) introduced iAT (i-Air Touch) Technology, one of the first see-through display and air-touch input technologies for computers, wearable computers and mobile devices allowing a user's hand to be free of any physical device.

Advertisment

Wearing a pair of special eyeglasses, users can see and interact with a virtual input device (e.g. touchscreen or mouse) floating in air, while still seeing and interacting with the real world around them. i-Air Touch is available now for licensing by computing, consumer electronic and mobile companies.

Instead of controlling wearable computers with head movements, voice commands, touching the devices or entering commands into the app on a smartphone, i-Air Touch users can type on the "floating" keypad, keyboard, mouse or touch panel insuring flexibility, accuracy, privacy and convenience on-the-go.

i-Air Touch includes three components: see-through eyeglasses, an internal camera technology, and an air-touch interface. The see-through eyeglasses display data, images, and input devices to both eyes or only to one eye.

Advertisment

The camera scans for and records input, and the air-touch interface relays input from the camera to the eyeglasses displaying a response to the user.

The camera technology can be integrated with an existing camera in a wearable computer, and the air-touch interface can be integrated into the firmware and software system of a wearable computer, making it cost-effective to incorporate i-Air Touch in existing wearable-computer designs.

The DDDR (defined distance with defined range) camera is the key functional component of i-Air Touch and conserves battery power, a major issue facing manufacturers of many wearable computers. i-Air Touch commercialization is currently underway and available for transfer to companies worldwide. ITRI holds eight international patents on i-Air Touch technology (Taiwan, China, and the U.S).

tech-news