PhD Student From Goa Develops Touch Free Technology For Smartphone

Touchscreen could soon be phased out to make way for gesture recognition. Andrea Colac, a MIT student from Goa has developed an innovative software which could let smartphones to recognize gestures in the air.

PhD student from South Goa's Velim won MIT $100K entrepreneurship competition for the innovation and also earned one of the most-sought after doctorate seat at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute Technology (MIT). Her innovation allows devices like phones to pickup millimeter accurate 3D gestures, in real time.

The innovation was presented to the competition as a 3dim Tech solution and received $120,000 as financing from the competition, along with the $100,000 first prize. 3Dim was started by three senior Ph.D. students at MIT - Ahmed Kirmani, Andrea Colaço and Nan-Wei Gong.

Andrea Colaco said "what is the next interface for cellphone devices? It is gesture recognition. Every cellphone-device manufacturer is scrambling to bring gesture-recognition into their devices. This is an immediate and unaddressed market."

3dim now plans to use the funding to develop the technology for smartphone manufacturers. Andrea told that the team has already met up with top 5 handset manufacturers in the world in order present the product.

Andrea says that the prototype only demands a few milliwatts of additional power from the phone. She also convays that the software would not require any additional hardware requirements in order to run. "Real estate in any device is so valuable that manufacturers hate it when you tell them they must add hardware to enable a new, differentiating and valuable feature." Andrea said.

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Source: Wall Street Journal