video by Princeton Engineering...Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Naveen Verma and his team are developing technologies to make it possible to interact with computers or other electronic devices using hand gestures instead of typing on a keyboard.

The 3-D motion sensing of SpaceTouch is made possible by the addition of invisible electrodes to an everyday touchscreen. These electrodes generate an electric field in front of the touchscreen. When a hand moves through the electric field, information about the movement can be acquired by a specialized computer chip.

The possible applications for this technology are many, said Verma. For instance, a surgeon in an operating room could use SpaceTouch to scroll through a patient's X-rays. A cook could browse recipes on a surface embedded in an oven or refrigerator door. And three-dimensional sensing could create new possibilities for video games and educational tools.

"These are applications that we really didn't think of when we started working on this technology," Verma said. The SpaceTouch technology, which receives funding from the National Science Foundation, was developed by a team that includes electrical engineering graduate students Yingzhe Hu, Aoxiang Tang and Liechao Huang, as well as Professor of Electrical Engineering Sigurd Wagner and James Sturm, Princeton's Stephen R. Forrest Professor in Electrical Engineering.

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