Thumb-typing texts or emails on a smartphone’s keypad can be
excruciating. The touchscreen is uber sensitive, the keys are
too small and you spend more time correcting your mistakes — or
the auto-correct mistakes — than you do writing. Computer
scientists at Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
understand this. That’s why Christoph Amma and colleagues have
created an innovative “air-writing” glove system that allows
users to draw letters in the air with their hand. The glove is
equipped with accelerometers and gyroscopes that detect hand
movements. The system then identifies which letters are being
drawn and converts them into digital text, which can then be
wirelessly entered into an email, text message or other mobile
apps. The system uses pattern recognition software to interpret
gestures and is capable of recognizing approximately 8,000
words, along with complete sentences. The only caveat? You have
to “write” in all-capital letters. Currently, the model has an
error rate of 11 percent, but that dr