Up till now, motion control has required you to swing around a remote-control baton, stand in front a motion-sensing camera, or swipe your iPhone. However, Chirp, a small chip engineered by a team at the University of California Berkeley, makes these bulky motion-capture devices unnecessary. You can control any electronic device with simply the wave of your hand.

Chirp is a tiny ultrasound chip that relies on sound, transmitting sound waves into the air around it. The chip measures the presence of echoes, which accurately reports to the processor the exact location of objects, like say your fingers. No longer would touching the touchscreen on your smartphone be necessary, leaving your precious gadget free of fingerprint smudges. The video also shows a tester playing a flight sim by clutching an invisible joystick.

Of course this could have huge ramifications for games. Playing a motion-controlled game without an accelerometer, touchscreen, or camera should lead to more precise controls, a point of contention among people who’d rather play games with a controller. It’s easy to imagine the intricacy that would be allowed, making use of ten fingers, your arms, and hands. Hopefully these chips find their way out of the laboratory and into our games eventually.