Control Netflix and Lamps With a Twist of Your Hand? With This Smartwatch Tech, You Can – CNET [CNET]
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The software, from Finnish startup Doublepoint, can make an Android watch into a general purpose controller for any device via a Bluetooth connection. It’s up to developers and app-makers to decide what a small gesture like tapping fingers or rotating your wrist will actually do, but watching it all in motion in several demos at a press event was a fascinating glimpse into the future.
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“It’s like a mouse that’s basically on your wrist all the time,” CTO Jamin Hu told me on the CES show floor.
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The software also works in tandem with eye tracking and “RayCasting” to make headset screen navigation simpler.
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Gesture commands aren’t at all new. For example, Apple’s Double Tap for Apple Watch is an extension of its AssistiveTouch feature. But Doublepoint’s technology will let users assign microgestures for any device running on Android’s smartwatch software.
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As AR and VR continue to gain momentum, the future of personal computing is increasingly keyboardless and mouseless, using gestures to do what tapping and clicking do now.
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The software will come to developers in the first half of this year, so we’re still a ways out from seeing this technology arrive on the watch you’re wearing right now — but there’s some momentum.
A partnership with chipmaker Qualcomm opens doors for the software to appear on even more devices. “Our hope is that every Qualcomm device or chip that ends up on a smartwatch will have this built in.”