LAS VEGAS, Nov. 12 (UPI) -- Nanscent technology displayed Monday at the giant Comdex show would give users of Palm Pilots and other handheld computers the benefits of a keyboard without taking up additional space.
Senseboard Technologies, a startup company in Stockholm, Sweden, is developing the "Virtual Keyboard" to aid users who otherwise struggle with handwriting recognition or tiny touchscreen keypads, said Gunilla Alsio, the company's president and inventor of the system.
The device could also help users suffering from repetitive-motion injury, such as carpal-tunnel syndrome, by letting them type in a more natural position, she said.
The technology involves pads worn on a person's palms, just below the fingers. Alsio said strain gauges in the pad detect how far a particular finger has moved.
Software compares that data with known values for touch-typing on a normal keyboard, she said, and uses artificial intelligence to determine what key would have been struck. The system should be about 95 percent accurate out of the box, then improve as the AI learns a user's habits, she said.
The keyboard will initially use a cord to connect to handheld devices, smart phones or even wearable computers, Alsio said. That version could reach the marketplace by mid-2002, she said, and an advanced model using the Bluetooth wireless standard would appear about six months after that.
Douglas Dedo, group product manager for Microsoft's Mobile Devices Division in Redmond, Wash., said the idea of a virtual keyboard is very interesting, since it wouldn't require additional physical space to be used. Dedo wasn't sure how well the current or next generation of handheld computers would do in providing the processing power to handle the device's AI demands.
Such a product would fill a void in portable computer users' needs once it becomes available, he said.
"Some people can move a lot faster entering data by typing or typing motions, so (the virtual keyboard) adds another dimension to entering data," Dedo said. "There are a lot of settings where (voice recognition) is not going to be an appropriate way to enter information or interact with a device."
For instance, a company meeting would preclude talking to a device, and a crowded public space would be too noisy to do so effectively, Dedo said. Nevertheless, tasks such as starting a program or navigating around the computer desktop will probably remain beyond the capabilites of a virtual keyboard, he said.
Dedo said the keyboard's wireless version will be very important in providing the ease-of-use people want. Senseboard shouldn't eliminate a wired capability altogether, he said, since some users already perform wireless tasks with the handheld computer and might not be able to add a Bluetooth connection.
