Forget about traditional touchscreen displays, laser keyboards, and gesture-based controls. None of those have the same wacky sci-fi appeal as "Skinput," the new self-touch input method Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft are tag teaming.

Skinput is essentially a touchscreen interface for your flesh, but don't worry, it doesn't require any surgery or limb replacements. Instead, a microchip-sized pico projector beams images onto your skin. When you tap on these, the signals get picked up by the special armband equipped with a bio-acoustic sensing array built into it.

"We resolve the location of finger taps in the arm and hand by analyzing mechanical vibrations to propagate through the body," the research team states in their abstract. "We collect these signals using a novel array of sensors worn as an armband.This approach provides an always available, naturally portable, and on-body finger input system."

The armband contains five piezoelectric cantilevers, each one weighted to respond to certain bands of sound frequencies. A different combination of sensors are triggered depending on where you tap yourself.

Check out all the details here (PDF).

Image Credit: Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University

Forget about traditional touchscreen displays, laser keyboards, and gesture-based controls. None of those have the same wacky sci-fi appeal as "Skinput," the new self-touch input method Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft are tag teaming.

Skinput is essentially a touchscreen interface for your flesh, but don't worry, it doesn't require any surgery or limb replacements. Instead, a microchip-sized pico projector beams images onto your skin. When you tap on these, the signals get picked up by the special armband equipped with a bio-acoustic sensing array built into it.

"We resolve the location of finger taps in the arm and hand by analyzing mechanical vibrations to propagate through the body," the research team states in their abstract. "We collect these signals using a novel array of sensors worn as an armband.This approach provides an always available, naturally portable, and on-body finger input system."

The armband contains five piezoelectric cantilevers, each one weighted to respond to certain bands of sound frequencies. A different combination of sensors are triggered depending on where you tap yourself.

Check out all the details here (PDF).

Image Credit: Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University

During the TEDIndia conference, Pranav Mistry, inventor of SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and world of data, demoed several gesture control concepts and posted a video for all to see.

Among the concepts is an ultrasonic pen capable of drawing in three-dimension using IR LEDs and and an ultrasonic receiver. While not of interest to the average user, something like this could be a boon to architectures and engineers working on cutting edge designs.

But it's the augmented reality portion of the video that drew applause from the crowd. Armed with a tiny camera that acts as a digital eye, Mistry demonstrated how it's possible to take take a picture just simulating the gesture of snapping a photo without a digital camera in his hand.

"I'm more excited that you can actually take it outside. Rather than getting your camera out of your pocket, you can just do the gesture of taking a photo and it takes a photo for you," Mistry said.

Watch the 14 minute video here.

Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group plans to present a paper on five different touch-sensitive mice prototypes during this week's User Interface Software and Technology Conferences in British Columbia, Canada.

With Windows 7 touting mutlitouch capabilities, this could be Microsoft's way appealing to the majority of users who don't own a touchscreen display. But don't expect to see all five designs come to fruition - it's much more likely that the five prototypes would end up being whittled down to one or two products.

FTIR (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection) Mouse

This prototype uses the principle of frustrated total internal reflection and has a built-in-camera to sense user's touches on top of an arc-shaped piece of acrylic.

Orb Mouse

Utilizes a hemispherical surface with an IR-sensitive camera for multitouch capabilities. Microsoft says the design allows for an easy to grip form-factor that remains comfortable, particularly for the fingers.

Cap (Capacitive) Mouse

Tracks the position of multiple fingers on its surface though the use of a flexible matrix of capacitive-sensing electrodes under the top of the surface. This is the most compact prototype of the five listed. It's also low on power consumption.

Side Mouse

Designed to rest under the user's palm and allow the fingers to touch the table surface in front of the device. The mouse then senses the proximity of the user's fingers as they touch the table instead of the mouse. Has the potential for two-handed input.

Arty (Articulated) Mouse

Probably the most other-worldly design of the bunch, the Arty Mouse builds on the Side Mouse design with a base for the palm of the hand to rest and two arms that can be freely and independently moved on the table by the thumb and index finger. Microsoft says this allows for a high-resolution optical mouse sensor to be placed under two of the user's fingers for high sensitivity computing.

Image Credits: Microsoft