A phone that turns your palm into touchscreen

A phone that turns your palm into touchscreen

Researchers at Potsdam University in Germany have developed an 'imaginary phone' that lets you keep your phone in your pocket and use apps or answer calls by tapping your hand.

Patrick Baudisch and his colleagues envision someone doing dishes when his smart phone rings. Instead of quickly drying his hands and fumbling to answer, the imaginary phone lets him simply slide a finger across his palm to answer it remotely.

The concept relies on a depth-sensitive camera to detect where you are pressing on your palm. Software interprets finger positions and movements and correlates it to the position of icons on a person's iPhone.

The technology used is similar to that in Microsoft's Kinect motion-sensing gaming system. The signal is sent to a computer that processes it and then sends the relevant command to your cellphone.

To work effectively, however, you'd need to know precisely where the apps are on their physical phone, and a technology that can sense where they are pressing on their hand so a computer can respond and send commands to your phone - wherever it is, reports New Scientist.