Smartwatches may be gaining in popularity, but some users are held back by the complications that arise from interacting with a tiny screen on their wrist.Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are taking a different tack to how we interact with smartwatches, developing a device called LumiWatch that not only projects information onto your arm, but also lets you interact with the projections.The "first fully-functional and self-contained projection smartwatch," one researcher writes, provides "a touchscreen interface right on your arm."The watch is said to provide about 40 square centimeters of space on which to interact with the projections, five times the surface area of the typical smartwatch.Housed in the watch are a 15 lumen scanned-laser projector, Qualcomm APQ8026 1.2 GHz quad-core CPU with a 450 MHz GPU, 768MB RAM, 4GB flash memory and a 740 mAh lithium-ion battery.As you can see in the video below, LumiWatch wearers control the interface right on their arm, such as swiping to unlock and selecting apps.
The watch can also track 2D finger movements, though for now it appears limited to drawing squiggly lines.Will we see consumer smartwatches adopt the projection method, turning everyone's arms into a touchscreen Time will tell, but this is certainly an intriguing, if still clunky, concept.Via The Verge