Smart Finger – Measuring made simple

A concept design featured over on the Yanko Design blog, and the brainchild of designers Choi Hyong-Suk, Jung Ji-hye and Yoo-Jin Park, the Smart Fingers are augmentations for your human hands that allow you to measure any distance quickly and easily.



It works by beaming a signal between the fingertip sensor and the thumb sensor: by measuring how long it takes for this signal to reach the receiving sensor, you can work out how far apart the two sensor are to a surprisingly high level of accuracy – it’s similar to how ultrasonic ‘tape’ measures work.

In olden days, people used to measure with their hands and palms, Jaana (length from thumb to little finger) or bethu(width of 4 finger). Even now, if you are asked to tell the size, unconsciously you will show it with your hands.

Once the distance has been calculated, it’s displayed on an integrated LCD screen for you to jot down – but just being able to tell the length of an object isn’t smart enough for this gang of designers. Rather, you can also program the unit to expect additional measurements: add in a second and it’ll automatically calculate the area you just measured; give it a third and it will happily work out the volume of the area measured.

The Smart Finger is made out of silicon to make it possible to wear it with any finger size.  It manages to measure length, breadth and volume all through pushing a few little buttons.  Once it measures the distance it’ll display it through LED.  It measures by the basis of the time taken by the signal to beam from one finger to the other and back again.  Right now this is obviously a concept, but it is an interesting one to say the least.

As it is a concept, you can take this up as an engineering Project! I bet it will become a good one if completed.

All the above images and concept is feature by Yanko Design blog ( http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/09/13/my-fingers-are-so-smart-they-measure/ )