Physicists have developed a sensor-driven ‘skin’ that allows you to control appliances and manipulate objects in AR and VR

The sensors on the electronic skin can also withstand bending, folding and stretching without losing their control functionality. A team of physicists has developed a sensor-driven electronic “skin” that can enable people to manipulate everyday objects or control appliances both in the physical world and in Augmented or Virtual Reality with mere gestures. “Our electronic skin traces the movement of a hand, for example, by changing its position with respect to the external magnetic field of a permanent magnet,” explained lead author Canon Bermudez of German Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. “To manipulate virtual objects, current systems essentially capture a moving body by optical means,” said Denys Makarov of the Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research at HZDR.