An IMU ring for low-latency mixed reality input

Because of their ability to visually sense the environment, head-mounted mixed reality (MR) systems can detect when a user touches a wall or other surface. These surfaces can then become interactive panels, with the small caveat that they traditionally treat a finger coming within 10mm of the surface as a touch. 

While this leads to sometimes inaccurate readings, researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing have implemented an inertial measurement unit (IMU) ring apparatus for contact sensing to increase precision from around 85% to just under 99%. 

The experimental setup for this exercise used an Arduino Uno to read accelerometer data, along with a capacitive arrangement to confirm when a touch actually took place. Accelerometer data was compared with readings from a Leap Motion optical sensor, which in addition to greater accuracy, also reduced latency.