Wave to Your Watch! - Researchers Develop Wristwatch with Gesture Recognition System

It seems that gesture recognition systems might actually be the next big hit in the area of remote controls, as an increasing number of researchers are announcing very interesting developments in this field. And the latest such announcement has been issued by a group of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, who claim that they've developed a wristwatch that recognizes hand gestures and uses them for touch-free control of electronic devices such as MP3 players, cell phones, and home appliances.

According to an article by Tracy Staedter for Discovery News, this new control system sports five infrared sensors, four of which sense any hand motion that occurs above the watch, while the fifth is used for gathering all the necessary motion data. Practically, any combination of movements carried out over the watch can have a certain meaning and activate a certain command, which is then transmitted via Bluetooth to an electronic device.

"One of things that's innovative is that they are using the space above the watch to give commands," said Joe Dvorak, a member of the technical staff at Motorola in Plantation to Tracy Staedter. Thus, the level of freedom provided to the user is higher than in the case of other devices, plus, since only one hand is carrying out the commands, the level of accuracy is higher.

However, this very innovative product does have its problems, as any other prototype. And one of the most serious issues is the device's size, which, as you can see from the picture, is not exactly very small. The team is considering reducing the size of this thing, but that could lead to a whole new set of problems.

Thus, reducing the size of the Gesture Watch (thinner battery, smaller sensors) might actually affect the device's functionality. "You want to make things as small as possible and as non-obtrusive as possible. But there comes a point where you make them so small that you make them harder to use. The same thing could be happening here," added Joe Dvorak, in his interview with Discovery News.

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