3pointD.com

The upcoming Siggraph conference, which starts Sunday, will see demonstrations of a boatload of interesting new technologies, among them a fingertip digitizer developed by researchers at the University of Buffalo’s Virtual Reality Laboratory (which has a bunch of other cool projects going, to boot).

A small thimble-shaped device worn on the tip of a finger, the digitizer is interesting as an input device. Imagine dragging your finger across the surface of a solid object and having it gradually take shape on your screen, complete with surface texture. While devices exist to do such things already, a fingertip is arguably a more intuitive and responsive device than any stylus or other peripheral. The UB lab has also developed cool stuff like a touch-based CAD device. Toss ‘em all in the pot and you could very well have a powerful interface that closes the gap between personal intention and what a computer understands. [Via What’s Next Network.]