LumiWatch turns your arm into a functional touch screen

February 29, 2020

Today I'm going to introduce LumiWatch, a smartwatch that turns your arm into a touchscreen the size of a smartphone. This smart health connected watch was designed by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and ASU Tech.

LumiWatch currently looks like a fairly bulky bracelet, which measures 50 x 41 x 17 mm. Inside this frame is a laser projector, a depth detection sensor, Android 5.1 and a quad-core processor. The smartwatch is also equipped with a battery allowing the projector to operate for one hour continuously. For a little more classic use, this battery gives the watch one day of autonomy on a single charge.

LumiWatch turns your arm into a smartphone-sized touchscreen

The combination of this hardware and software is capable of creating a touch screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. Or about 40cm2 of interactive surface on the arm.

From this touch screen, you can tap and swipe to reproduce the type of gesture support you would get on a smartphone. Watch the ehealth below to see how it works.

(Embed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJNMrulWJ3k (/ embed)

One of the obstacles the research team faced was to tackle the possibility of projecting on the arm without the image distortion that one can have when projecting on an irregular surface. We also had to make sure that the light level was uniform over the entire surface.

To date, the price of LumiWatch is $ 600; either at can loan the same price as for an Apple Watch. The big question is whether this project will really see the light of day. What you should know is that Chinese company Haier launched its Asu smartwatch with a built-in projector earlier this year. However, the LumiWatch smartwatch was created in collaboration with the Chinese consumer electronics company ASU Tech … Hopefully before its commercialization, this smart health connected watch will be a bit miniaturized …