It would be great for the human race, to have a way to record thoughts as text, whilst moving.
This would help us in the “battle” against sedentary lifestyles.
The two best methods we have at the moment are:
- Smartphones… we need to be staring at the device in order to type. Taking our attention significantly away from moving, and putting a barrier between us and the environment.
- Speech to Text… we can currently record our voice whilst we are walking and then later convert it into text. However if we want to compose the text “perfectly” on the go, a form of text based input is superior.
How about a new method.
It requires two different pieces of technology.
The first allows you to see the text overlaid on top of your normal vision, without completely obstructing it. Allowing you to navigate comfortably.
The second allows you to “type” using your fingers, whilst your arms are by your side (or anywhere you’d like them to be).
When typing mode is “enabled”, you could imagine one gesturing in a tapping motion with each finger, and each gesture representing a character on the keyboard.
With the 10 digits (phalanges) available to us, we are limited in characters.
However, if we prioritise letters by usage, we could assign the most popular to single taps, less popular to double taps, and least popular to triple taps… giving us about 30 characters to start.
I mentioned this to my sister, and she suggested this was far too complex, and instead we use the gloves to do handwriting as we move. With the computer interpreting from the handwriting to text. That could work too.
It appears the technology needed to implement this idea already exists (to a certain extent).
The first is an external HUD similar to the Recon Jet:
Notice the speedometer in the video, it is coming via the Recon Jet.
Where the Recon Jet differs from Google’s Glass is in its ability to augment reality without detracting from your normal vision. You can see in the YouTube video above how the cyclist can move his head and still see the speedometer. Glass itself currently requires you to “look up” to see its screen.
It makes logical sense that there would be a quick method of removing the visual overlay, if for some reason it was getting in the way of the customer.
Then to facilitate typing without a keyboard, we could use an input glove similar to Dexta’s Dexmo:
This demo is even cooler:
And that’s basically it. The two in combination could facilitate a new method of text based input, that isn’t tied to location like a laptop or smartphone keyboard is.