Waving goodbye to touch screens

Devices equipped with a new generation of touch-free interfaces could appear on the market by the end of next year, according to US display specialist Ethertouch.

The company is working with the likes of Nokia and Microsoft to create applications for its technology, which can sense an operator’s finger movements in 3D. It aims to replace conventional human machine interfaces such as keypads or mice with non-tactile control via motions or gestures that will enable uses to simply point at a desired area of a display screen and zoom in on the relevant section.

In operation, an array of Ethertouch sensors track the position and velocity of a user’s finger or hand as it passes through a sensing field and convert the data into a digital signal, which is then handed off to a processor to perform calculations on the data.

Dr Francois Kapp, senior engineer at Ethertouch, said that this ability to measure velocity as well as position makes the technology particularly attractive to the computer games industry, where it could enable a new level of immersion in virtual reality gaming.