The smartphone and the tablet technologies didn’t take long or much of an effort to explode, but the same can’t be said about smartwatches. Despite their promoters’ best efforts, the smartwatch mania hasn’t quite reached the level that initial predictions brought it soaring to. At the same time, the lukewarm market reception hasn’t deterred backers of this new technology one bit, as they’re still convinced that wearable tech is the next big thing and judging by its latest update, it’s clear why.
Meet Aria, an add-on clip for Android Wear and Pebble Time, the latter of which set a Kickstarter record with its crowdfunding campaign, that lets the user control their smartwatch without the need to actually touch it. Aria actually reads preset finger gestures to execute specific commands on the smart watch. How does it manage this? According to Wareable.com, the chip contained within Aria monitors the movement of the tendon in the wrist and translates such movements into appropriate actions.
When the Aria module is attached to the wrist, it enables the viewer to navigate the smartwatch’s user interface with simple finger movements. The culmination of all this smart-sensing technology is a lack of necessity to touch the watch’s surface in order to interact with the device.
Gesture control devices have been previously launched, but none of them have managed to deliver the promised results.
The product is to be made available on Kickstarter come next month and according to Tech Crunch, a developer version will be introduced at the same time. The developer version will also have a software development kit (SDK), which will be compatible with iOS. What this means is that while Aria will not be able to directly control the Apple Watch, its SDK surely will.
Do you think Aria will work as intended or will this merely be yet another failed attempt to integrated gesture-based controls?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4IrLj-ApDs
