Scientists have developed ultrathin electronic skin tattoos that can help control virtual and physical objects with mere hand gestures. The extremely thin, almost invisible foil that sticks to the palm of the hand like a second skin, have sensors which provide people with a “sixth sense” for magnetic fields.
These sensors will enable people to manipulate everyday objects or control appliances with mere gestures, similar to how we use a smartphone now.
“Our electronic skin traces the movement of a hand, for example, by changing its position with respect to the external magnetic field of a permanent magnet,” said Canon Bermudez of Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) in Germany.
“This not only means that we can digitise its rotations and translate them to the virtual world but also even influence objects there,” said Mr. Bermudez, lead author of the study.
Using this technique, the researchers managed to control a virtual light bulb on a computer screen in a touchless way.
They associated the angle between the wearable sensor and the magnetic source with a control parameter. “By coding the angles between 0 and 180 degrees so that they corresponded to a typical hand movement when adjusting a lamp, we created a dimmer and controlled it just with a hand movement over the permanent magnet,” said Denys Makarov from HZDR.
