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It strikes me as ridiculous that companies talk about AR replacing laptops when they fail at the most basic task we do on a computer: typing. Of course people have tried, but they are overwhelmingly slow, irritating, and gimmicky. The techniques that actually work look a lot like typing, and that’s obvious from first principles. A good text entry method should be fast, accurate, easy to use, and easy to learn.

There’s an awesome paper which converts finger motion into keystrokes, essentially converting any table into a keyboard. In many ways it’s a step above a regular keyboard because it’s matched to the size of your hands and it’s always in a comfortable position. They tell us it’s designed for AR but that forgets that AR is about adding to the outside world, on the go. It’s unlikely people will carry a table around with them, so a solution needs to work with whatever surface is available. This is where my proposal comes in.

I plan to extend existing virtual keyboards to let people type on their legs (or anything else). My vision is that you can sit down, splay your fingers across a surface to define a keyboard, and start typing. This means handling two challenges: curved surfaces, and soft surfaces. I think it’s possible, but I’ll need to teach myself machine learning to get this working.

I feel intimidated but excited by the amount I’ve bitten off, which I think is how it’s supposed to feel. I finish in February 2027, I will report back then. If anyone is reading this with questions or ideas (or job offers) get in touch [email protected]