Wearable Sensors Are the Invisible Keyboards of the Future

Typing on mobile devices with on-screen keyboards sucks. Even the portable Bluetooth keyboards for your tablet aren’t great – particularly for people with fingers too big for those miniature keys. AirType could be a crazy useful new way to type without the need to carry around a separate keyboard.

AirType is a pair of cuff-like devices that fit around your hands to detect the movement of your fingers. The premise seems to be that you make the same hand movements that you do when using a keyboard and the AirType cuffs register those movements as alphanumerical input.

For those who never learned touch typing, it seems that the AirType could prove more problematic than an actual mini-keyboard since there is no option to hunt and peck. But the creators say that the device learns from you, adapting to your personal typing style and habits.

The accompanying app includes dynamic text prediction and real-time correction, which could mean that your tablet computer typing experience is about to get much, much easier. Or it could mean that auto-correct disasters are about to get a lot worse. Either way, we’re intrigued to see what the AirType team brings to the table in the coming months.