LumiWatch Is a Wearable That Projects a Touch-Capable Interface onto Your Arm

Wearables have a lot of potential for making our various tech gadgets integrate more seamlessly into our lives. Smart watches are a great example of that — the newest Apple Watch is practically an iPhone in its own right. But, the Apple Watch, like all smart watches, has a pretty glaring drawback: the small screen.

LumiWatch is designed to overcome that limitation by projecting the screen across your entire lower arm. The device itself resembles a traditional smart watch, but instead of the screen being on the watch face, it’s projected onto your arm with a 15 lumen projection module. That projector is able to effectively turn your arm into a 40cm² display that’s many times larger than any smart watch on the market.

Even better, LumiWatch doesn’t just display content, it also lets you interact with it via touch. Incorporated into the gadget is a ten-element time-of-flight depth-sensing array that can determine where on your skin you’re tapping. So, you could select icons projected onto your arm just like you would with a traditional touchscreen.

Currently, LumiWatch is just a prototype developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. But, the benefits of the device are obvious. It’s entirely possible that this kind of technology will soon be incorporated into consumer smart watches in the near future.