From the advent of touch screens onwards there has been a flourishing of mobile devices and tablets: our way of interacting with these devices has changed at an impressive speed.
Today someone may mistakenly imagine that the 'finger-on-screen' scheme is the one on which the fortune of future technologies will be built, but it is not written anywhere: a prototype currently under study promises to let us use a device 'by touching ' any surface.
Magic fingers is a joint project developed by two Canadian universities (Alberta and Toronto) in collaboration with Autodesk: it combines a micro-camera with an optical motion sensor that you won't easily forget (if only for 'tying it to your finger'. Ok. Very bad). This prototype is capable of making us operate on a desk, a piece of paper and even our skin. Magic Finger can execute commands with combinations of gestures and transfer data from one 'finger' to another.
The device is calibrated on 22 surface types, with an astonishing 98.9% accuracy. If it gives me so much, we will say goodbye to the mouse and the abuse of the term 'touchscreen' before long.
Here is a video showing Magic Finger in action.
[Youtube] WgR1358xZaY [/ youtube]
