Remember the wristwatch worn by Robert Downey Jr in Captain America Civil War? While the whole concept of turning your watch into a full-fledged suit might seem to be a bit too futuristic for our taste, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have gone close to making a part of this a reality. A new smartwatch developed by the researchers, which they are calling 'LumiWatch', comes with a built-in projector as a world's first. So what does the watch do that other smartwatches don't? Well, it turns your arm into a full-fledged touch-screen display.
As a first of its kind, the LumiWatch comes with a fully-functional in-built laser projector and an array of sensors. All this is embedded in a 40 square centimetres of an interactive surface that is roughly five times the size of an average smartwatch. As can be seen in a recently posted video by the creators, the LumiWatch is able to display the swipe-to-unlock mechanism on the arm of the wearer and can further track the finger touch input of the users. The watch works on an Android operating system and can even connect to Bluetooth and WiFi.
As for its specifications, the LumiWatch is powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core Qualcomm CPU with Android 5.1 OS and carries a 768MB RAM along with 4GB of internal storage. It is backed by a 740 mAh lithium-ion battery and researchers claim that it can last an entire day with intermittent use. For projection, the watch uses a 15 Lumen scanned-laser projector.
Watch the video of the LumiWatch in operation here:
Robert Xiao, one of the creators of the watch writes in his blog: "Compact, worn computers with projected, on-skin touch interfaces have been a long-standing yet elusive goal, largely written off as science fiction. Such devices offer the potential to mitigate the significant human input/output bottleneck inherent in worn devices with small screens."
In case the watch makes its appearance in the market, it is expected to retail around the $600 mark.
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