Computer scientists at the University of Waterloo have created a device for wearable computer input suitable for many situations, just by touching your fingertips together in different ways.
Computer scientists at the University of Waterloo have created a device for wearable computer input suitable for many situations, just by touching your fingertips together in different ways.
The device, called Tip-Tap, is inexpensive and battery-free through the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to sense when fingertips touch. The device could, therefore, be added to disposable surgical gloves, allowing surgeons to access preoperative planning diagrams in an operating room.
“One of the many possible applications of the device is in surgeries. What typically happens now with operation digital preplanning is that an assistant is responsible for navigating the computer and communicating with the surgeon, but this is slow and difficult", said Daniel Vogel, a professor in Waterloo’s David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. “If the surgeon tries to navigate it themselves using a touchscreen or a mouse, it’s problematic because it would require constant sterilization, and current alternatives such as big gestures tracked by computer vision can get very tiring.
“The idea is if you mount Tip-Tap in surgical gloves, surgeons could navigate the computer themselves from where they are, and it won’t affect their other actions like picking up the scalpel.”
Read more at University of Waterloo
