ET Sunday Magazine

Fin: Rohildev Nattukallingal’s device controls smartphones & TV remote through your palm

9 Mar, 2014, 0354 hrs IST

By Jyoti Pande Lavakare 

Remember those people talking animatedly to themselves in public who you used to give a wide berth to before you realized that they weren't crazy, just the first users of a new Bluetooth technology with wireless devices tucked behind their ears?

Well, get ready for the next wave of people acting strange publicly, gesturing and waving their fingers in your face, with colourful rings around their thumbs. Because they're coming, and those rings are the newest addition to the "internet of things" — wearable technology that promises to change the world. The rings, called Fins, make your entire palm a gesture interface with which you can control multiple connected devices.

Wearable technology is the new cool and everyone knows about Google glasses and Pebble watches. But an Indian innovator may beat all the rest by being the first to actually launch his wearable device, the Fin, a tiny piece of hardware that you can wear on your thumb, which is capable of recognizing each segment of your finger biometrically and converts your palm into a numeric keypad. Why, if Rohildev Nattukallingal and his team have their way, you may never need to touch your phone again to make a call! Or a television remote or any home automation device. It's the world at your fingertips — literally.

Palm Gets a Makeover 

Fin reads different gestures from your palm and its corresponding values control connected devices. So, for example, if you want to turn your phone's volume down, all you need to do is swipe your thumb down your index finger. Want to turn it back up? Just swipe back up across the same finger. Want to skip the current track? Swipe your thumb across the palm of the opposite hand. You get the general idea.

Here's how Fin (short for finger) works: an optical sensor tucked into a small ring around your thumb is able to detect swipes and taps across your hand. When it detects a gesture, it wirelessly communicates that command to your connected device — be it a smartphone, TV or another wearable device.

Another really interesting thing about this innovation is the manner in which Nattukallingal found funding. His RHL Vision is one of the rare Indian companies that have used crowdfunding, using the Indiegogo platform. Crowdfunding is the collective effort of individuals who network and pool their money, usually via the internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations.

"When we started the initiative on January 8, we were hoping to garner $100,000 for our expansion in 45-60 days. But we exceeded that number in 38 days," says Nattukallingal. Till Friday evening he has collected $189,913 from 1,514 funders already, according to the Indiegogo site.

This motivated them to stretch their goal. On March 2, they announced if they are able to collect $250,000, they will work to add a panic emergency alert to their Fin rings so that women can use it for increased security, emergency and accidents. A week before this announcement, Nattukallingal had announced that Fin will add some features to its ring that will help the visually challenged. Fin's unique selling proposition from other similar Bluetooth devices is that it can connect to three devices at one time, something competitors like Smarty Ring or Gecko can't do.

Nattukallingal's company was initially incubated by Startup Village, a technology business incubator in Kochi. But even before Indiegogo's overwhelming response, Nattukallingal had already sent 50 enquiries through LinkedIn to find an investor who would bet on him. He found one. A young medical graduate, Ritesh Mallik invested Rs 15 lakh in his company, giving him around 15% of the company's equity.

Thumbs Up 

Nattukallingal studied engineering at the Kathir College of Engineering, Coimbatore. He founded RHL Vision while he was still in college. He has previously designed a gesture-based touchless display that can be installed inside operation theatres to aid surgery by helping doctors to navigate through a patient's history from 4 metres away from the screen. The device uses a camera, preloaded software and Microsoft Kinect for motionsensing.

He has also developed an app called Ferne, a touchless interface for smartphones that can navigate a playlist using simple hand gestures.

He wants to make gesture recognition more mainstream. "There are so many applications now," Nattukallingal said in a phone interview from Kochi. However, for now, his and his team of seven are focusing mainly on Fin. "It's the next level of gesture-based technology, very natural, very low-energy. It's almost gestureless. You don't even have to raise your arms in the air — you get a lot of privacy too," he says. His backer Mallik says: "Medically speaking, the thumb joint is the most viable, the least prone to getting stressed by repeated use." This, in a nutshell, is what makes the Fin the best out of all similar gesture-based products.

The team's current Fin prototype still looks bulky — because it relies more on traditional printed circuit board and off-the shelf-sensors. The final design the team has planned out will use flexible circuitry to shrink the design so that it can wrap around your thumb.

"It will look much sleeker," Nattukallingal says. "Currently, we're making everything locally, but once we get the money, we have the full bill of material and contacts in Taiwan and China to make our final product," he adds.

RHL was one of the top 15 companies at the TechCrunch CES Hardware Battlefield in Las Vegas and the only Indian start-up to be selected for the Pioneers Festival, a prominent start-up do in Austria. It was also the second runner-up at the Microsoft BizSpark India Startup Challenge 2013.

At 23, those are achievements to be proud of.
(The author is an independent columnist and writer)