This Necklace Could Allow You To Check Texts On Your Open Palm

Pretty soon you won't even need to check your phone to, well, check your phone. A research team at the University of Ulm in Germany premiered a video of a device called Ambient Mobile Pervasive Display, which uses a projector to display push notifications onto surfaces in front of you, such as your hand or a wall. To access the messages, you make a gesture with your hand such as a swiping motion. The craziest part is that all this technology could be disguised as a necklace. The mind reels at how a rapper could stylize the innovation.

According to Christian Winkler, who co-authored a research paper on the project, "The projector gives you a window into the virtual world that you carry around like a flashlight, as a way of serendipitously accessing information." Feasibly, the device would allow you to customize gestures to correspond varying application--a clenched fist could open your email while a thumbs up could display Tinder messages.

Image of device via

Ambient Mobile Pervasive Display is very similar, if not identical, to SixthSense, a device developed by Pranav Mistry of the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT's Media Lab. Here's a basic summary of Mistry's own projecting necklace, according to MIT:

SixthSense bridges this gap by augmenting the physical world with digital information, bringing intangible information into the tangible world. Using a projector and camera worn as a pendant around the neck, SixthSense sees what you see and visually augments surfaces or objects with which you interact. It projects information onto any surface or object, and allows users to interact with the information through natural hand gestures, arm movements, or with the object itself. SixthSense makes the entire world your computer.

Though we're unsure if the teams behind SixthSense and Ambient Mobile Pervasive Display have intersected, we believe they could collaborate to make one of the most futuristic pieces of jewelry we can imagine. It may be some time until this is a consumer-grade item, but we're already imagining how 2 Chainz could personalize a wearable of this level.

The system will be presented at the annual computer-human interaction conference in Toronto this April. See Pranav Mistry's TED Talk on SixthSense below.

via New Scientist

Lead Image via Ambient Mobile Pervasive Display

@zachsokol