A half-implant device on fingernails

Abstract

Hand gesture feedback systems using tactile or visual information can only be used in given situations because of the limitations of the device features such as the need for a battery. In this paper, we propose a half-implant device located on the fingernail. The half-implant device consists of a radio frequency (RF) receiving antenna, small electronic parts, and UV gel. The UV gel is used to glue the parts onto the user's nail and cover the parts meant to be waterproof. The device receives power from the RF antenna; therefore, it does not require a battery to function. It notifies whether the finger is in a target site by lighting an LED or activating a vibration motor. The primary benefit of this device is that the user can feel hand gesture feedback, anytime and anywhere. The device can be placed on the users' fingernail for approximately three weeks. To verify the devices' influence on the users' pointing task, we conducted a preliminary user study. The task success rate was 100% over the sessions with tactile and visual feedback and 97% without feedback. The experiment revealed that the tactile notification reduced the task time by 12.3 % compared to that of the test with no feedback.