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posted by cmn32480 on Monday December 05 2016, @02:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the shaking-with-delight dept.

Two university students and their professor have created smartphone software that allows people with hand tremors to use touchscreens accurately.

According to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 11 million people have cerebral palsy globally, an additional 10 million have Parkinson's Disease and with an aging population there is growing demand for a solution.

It was a situation noted by two of the university's students - Aviva Dayan and Ido Elad - and their Professor Yuval Kochman who went on to develop a potentially "life-changing", but yet-to-be-named, tremor absorbing software which could open up touchscreen technology to millions of people.

[...] Dayan describes the software as a "translation programme" which intercepts and "listens" to the shaky screen touches, cancelling out the "noise" of the tremors for the operating system to understand and act upon without delay.

[...] Dayan says: "As far as the user is concerned, they just press the icons on the screen, and the computer works just the same as it works for anyone else."

This looks to be an invaluable piece of software to keep older people connected to their friends and family.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @03:44AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @03:44AM (#437051)

    My fingers are too wide for smartphone keyboards when in portrait mode. Can this tech help that?

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @03:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @03:49AM (#437052)

    Sext and masturbate with the same hand!

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by nethead on Monday December 05 2016, @04:15AM

    by nethead (4970) <joe@nethead.com> on Monday December 05 2016, @04:15AM (#437057) Homepage

    So now I can actually adjust the heater when I'm not on a smooth highway?

    --
    How did my SN UID end up over 3 times my /. UID?
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @10:24AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @10:24AM (#437116)

      I can't wait for the update to hit. The touch screen steering on my car is going to be even more amazing than it already is!

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday December 05 2016, @12:51PM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday December 05 2016, @12:51PM (#437135) Homepage
    One of my company's clients is a HCI lab, producing some very interesting papers on the field of how people with various difficulties, eyesight, sense of touch, motor control, etc. can interact with mobile devices more easily. One of the "advances" of modern technology has been migration away from resistive touch screens, where you actually have to press the surface, and onto capacitive ones, where zero pressure is required to register contact - sometimes just hovering close enough to the screen is enough. Better for oldies, you might say? Quite the opposite - oldies firstly have much drier skin, which means that capacitive touchscreens sometimes won't detect actual contact, and secondly the tactile feedback is poor, and oldies will often press hard anyway, they don't need the delicate sensitivity of capacitive, in particular when the sensitivity is cranked up to the max so that their digits are visible to the system at all. A few big buttons that you need to hard are what they need, but alas UI designers don't care. Setting the time? The best method is the familiar large numeric keypad. No hunting, no gestures, and you get exactly what you ask for. But no, UI designers will design tumbling wheels that need to be spun in order to get the right number into place, or, even worse, a radial spinner which requires coordination in 2 dimensions, both of which suffer from the "shit, I knocked it out by 1 as I lifted my finger off the screen" annoyance - good luck with that, oldies.

    If you chose the right UI elements, you don't need to solve the problem of noise on the mechanical side of the interface, the interface will naturally be immune.

    Oh, but then it wouldn't be all modern and swipey and wasting real-estate and immersive and compelling and inefficient and all the other bullshit UX designers are foisting upon the world.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday December 05 2016, @01:37PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday December 05 2016, @01:37PM (#437141) Homepage
      Of course, I should blow my own trumpet and say that I implemented something rather like this in the Nokia N900's Linux tsc2005 touch-screen driver way back in 2009. Just check the for the "fudge" detection, that filtered out noise of small movements that probably weren't deliberate. Being a resistive screen, there was also a pressure value, which helped me implement different heuristics for increasing and decreasing pressure, which improved responsiveness.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday December 05 2016, @05:41PM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Monday December 05 2016, @05:41PM (#437269) Homepage Journal

    just recently it's been so bad in my left hand that it interferes with my typing.

    Interestingly, playing piano for a while calms the tremor.

    This is known as "Parkinsonism". Not really parkinsons but it looks like it.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @06:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @06:26PM (#437296)

    jew created software (in java) that runs a small mathematical function (stolen from goy) and then the jew tells everyone of how a university full of jews created software.

    Provides nothing of value. jews should stick with what they do best: steal money and call it their own; murder innocents and play victim among all the crimes the jew commits. Do not post these stories. The only reason anyone would want to comment is to make fun of the "inventions" of jews.