Abstract
Fine-grained hand tracking is a cornerstone of AR/VR interaction, health monitoring, and assistive technology. Existing solutions are either tethered (gloves), camera-dependent (Leap Motion), or too coarse for meaningful interaction. MagX introduces a fundamentally new approach: wearable passive magnets on the fingers and a magnetometer array on the wrist continuously track hand pose in 3D without any cables, cameras, or infrastructure.
MagX is the first untethered, mobile magnetic tracking platform for fine-grained hand tracking. It can distinguish 26 hand gestures with high accuracy and enable continuous 3D finger tracking, opening new possibilities for mobile AR/VR and health monitoring applications.
Key Contributions
- First untethered, infrastructure-free wearable hand tracking system using passive magnets.
- Wrist-worn magnetometer array reconstructs full hand pose in real time.
- Works indoors, outdoors, in the dark, and through fabric — unlike camera-based systems.
- Open-source code: github.com/dychen24/magx.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{chen2021magx,
title = {MagX: Wearable, Untethered Hands Tracking with Passive Magnets},
author = {Chen, Dongyao and Wang, Mingke and He, Chenxi and Luo, Qing and Iravantchi, Yasha and Sample, Alanson and Shin, Kang G. and Wang, Xinbing},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 27th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom)},
year = {2021},
publisher = {ACM}
}