Devices are getting smaller and smaller these days – just take a look at all the cellphones that you see released on the market. While they have certainly grown larger from the halcyon days of colorless display handsets, it still is pretty amazing to see something as small as (relatively speaking, of course) the Nokia N95 pack in a GPS chipset, a 5 megapixel camera, and enough computing power underneath the hood that puts computing power from the 90s to shame. A group of researchers claims that buttons can only go so far in terms of functionality as devices get smaller, which is why they are working on a wristwatch that recognizes hand gestures while using them to control various electronic devices such as cameras, portable media players, cellphones, and home appliances .

In fact, another practical use for such a watch would be enabling a doctor to control a medical device during an operation although you would have to have deadly accuracy under such high-pressure situations. Known as the Gesture Watch, this wearable piece of technology comes with five infrared sensors, where four of these will be used in sensing any hand motion that occurs right above the watch. Take for example, sweeping a right hand over the watch once might mean “power on” while a circular motion could signify “shuffle”.

While a gesture-based watch sounds pretty cool, I guess it doesn’t take much for someone who is savvy in programming to come up with some rather rude gestures like the one finger salute. Do you think such a device will make accessibility much easier for users since most people are already so used to pressing buttons on a remote to get their way with the TV? Perhaps it will take at least one generation to make the leap to gesture-based controls, but it remains to be seen whether this path of progress is taken.

Source: Discovery News