Engineers at Autodesk have this month unveiled a new device called Magic Finger that allows any surface to become a Touchpad.
The Magic Finger is a small device that attaches to the end of a finger. The Autodesk’s Magic Finger is equipped with a micro camera and optical flow sensor to identify services and detect any motion from the user.
Magic Finger’s sensors
The Magic Finger attaches to the user with a simple Velcro binding allows you to use gestures such as slight pinch on tap to navigate computer applications.
Magic Finger’s high-resolution camera with image examples at various magnifications
“The Autodesk team hopes one day to make the Magic Finger into a self-contained device with appropriate miniaturization. Once reduced in size, the device might be attached to a ring or embedded under a fingernail or in the fingertip itself so that it is invisible and dormant until required.”
At the moment there Magic Finger device is just a proof of concept design, but the researchers at Autodesk are hoping to develop the fingertip device for future applications.