It’s hard to imagine that taking your phone out of your pocket would ever be considered “too much effort,” but should that happen, there’s a device disguised as a necklace that can project new messages directly onto your hand, or the ground in front of you. While the prototype is actually the size of a backpack, the team hope to get the technology to a point where it can also be used to give directions, and perform other smartphone-related functions.
The system would rely on specific gestures, each of which can be used to perform a different function. Theoretically, anything that requires you to look at a screen could be translated to work on this new device in the future. As Christian Winkler from the University of Ulm in Germany explains, “The projector gives you a window into the virtual world that you carry around like a flashlight, as a way of serendipitously accessing information.”
As reported by the New Scientist, William Coggshall, an analyst based in California is slightly more skeptical, and not just about the power requirements for a portable projector. His concern is that because the human hand “is not a very flat or uniform screen,” it could make a message of any significant length almost impossible to decipher.
Source: NewScientist
This post was originally written by Ross Brooks for PSFK.