To avoid awkwardness of typing on a tablet’s screen many accessories have been developed such as an add-on keyboard or Microsoft’s Surface tablet’s cover that has a built-in qwerty keyboard in it. But the drawback of that solution is that users need to take the accessory with them wherever they go.
Now it seems like Fujitsu with its invisible keyboard concept has finally figured out a way to solve that problem and will enable users to have a PC like typing experience on their tablets without the need of an accessory. The company has showcased the invisible keyboard software prototype at the Mobile World Congress event running on a Windows 8 tablet produced by itself. The software enables the tablet to use its front camera to read the movement of user’s hand and translate those actions into keyboard actions as if the user is typing on a real keyboard.
The user needs to imagine a physical keyboard while using the invisible keyboard even though its not there and type on it normally. The software recognizes the movements made by user’s finger and types the words for him. The system learns from the hand movements and determine their position on a keyboard even though it is not there.
Right now it can only be considered as a concept as according to TechCrunch the system doesn’t work rightly just yet and was unable to track the fingerprints when one of their writers tried it at Fujitsu’s booth. Interestingly the system is also capable of determining the color of user’s hand to see if the person typing is authorized or not. Nevertheless if it helps in increasing the user experience then we are all for it.
Fujitsu see this concept as a viable feature for tablets as well as smartphones and hopes to get it included in devices of the future. Its a clever idea by Fujitsu and lets hope they are able to polish it more so it can be released for everyone.