picoRing

The story of wireless, ultra-low-power smart ring sensing — from a batteryless keyboard to a ring-shaped mouse that lasts over a month, and a bimanual ring interface for everyday AR.

Explore the projects ↓ Compare specs
2020 · UIST
TelemetRing
Batteryless ring keyboard
2024 · UIST
picoRing
Thumb-to-index input
2025 · UIST
picoRing mouse
Wireless ring mouse
2026 · CHI
picoRing NFC
Body-scale NFC node
2026 · ISWC
picoRing dual
Bimanual XR input
The Projects

Five rings, one vision

From text entry to pointing to bimanual control — watch each prototype in action.

TelemetRing · UIST 2020

TelemetRing (aka picoRing keyboard)

A Batteryless & Wireless Ring-shaped Keyboard using Passive Inductive Telemetry

Five passive sensor rings — one per finger — let you type on any surface with no batteries at all. Each ring is a resonant coil tuned to a different frequency; a tap shifts its resonance, and a wrist-mounted reader coil picks up the change. Together they form a 5-bit chord keyboard that works completely battery-free.

PowerBatteryless
Ring weight6 g
Volume3.5 cm³
Detection89.7%
📄 ACM Paper 📑 BibTeX 🔗 Project page
picoRing · UIST 2024

picoRing

Battery-free Rings for Subtle Thumb-to-Index Input

A flexible sensing architecture for a whole family of battery-free rings. By inductively coupling a sensitive wristband reader coil with a fully-passive ring coil, picoRing turns each thumb-to-finger gesture — pressing, sliding, scrolling — into a unique passive response. The ring weighs just 1.5 g and is read reliably from up to 13 cm away, even near metal.

PowerBattery-free
Ring weight1.5 g
Readout range13 cm
Designs4 rings
📄 ACM Paper 📑 BibTeX 🔗 arXiv
picoRing mouse · UIST 2025

picoRing mouse

Ultra-low-power Ring-based Wireless Tinymouse

The ring becomes a mouse. A watch-like wristband acts as a signal relay between the ring and AR glasses, using semi-passive inductive telemetry instead of Bluetooth or NFC. The ring modulates the wristband's magnetic field via frequency-shift keying — scroll and press through subtle thumb-to-index gestures — drawing only hundreds of microwatts, so a 5 g ring runs continuously for over a month on a single charge.

Power≤ 0.449 mW
Battery27 mAh
Ring weight5 g
Battery life600–1000 h
📄 UIST 2025 (arXiv) 📑 BibTeX 📰 Press
picoRing NFC · CHI 2026

picoRing NFC

Body-scale NFC for Wearables — Human-centric Body-scale NFC Networking

picoRing grows up into a networked device. A compact, finger-worn NFC ring integrates a low-power, high-speed 3-axis accelerometer and an NFC module in a lightweight form factor. As part of a body-scale NFC network, it pairs with meandered e-textiles (Meander NFC) to overcome the weak coupling caused by distance and size mismatch — enabling stable, surface-to-multipoint communication between tiny wearable nodes spread across the body.

CommsNFC
Sensor3-axis accel.
PowerUltra-low
NetworkBody-scale
📄 arXiv 📑 BibTeX 🔗 CHI 2026 EA
picoRing dual · ISWC 2026

picoRing dual

An Ultra-low-power Bimanual Ring Interface based on Inductive Coupling

Two hands, two rings. picoRing dual is an ultra-low-power bimanual interface built from a pair of ring-wristbands. Unlike picoRing mouse — limited to uni-manual trackball input at about 50 bps — it uses an NFC-based ring-to-wristband link to capture fast index-finger motions and thumb-to-index microgestures reliably at about 1.4 kbps. By tuning the ring's coil geometry, it keeps stable NFC against finger bending while staying within NFC's ultra-low-power profile — so a ring drawing about 0.86 mW lasts roughly 100 continuous hours on a single 20 mAh charge, bridging powerful XR control and the subtlety everyday wearables demand.

Power (ring)≈ 0.86 mW
Battery20 mAh
Battery life≈ 100 h
Data rate≈ 1.4 kbps
🔗 Project page
💍💍
To appear at ISWC 2026.
Video & paper coming soon.
More from the lab →
Specifications

Performance comparison

How the five generations stack up across power, size, sensing, and capability.

TelemetRing picoRing picoRing mouse picoRing NFC picoRing dual
Year / Venue2020 · UIST2024 · UIST2025 · UIST2026 · CHI2026 · ISWC
RoleRing keyboardRing switchRing mouseRing AR controllerBimanual XR input
Communication methodPassive inductive telemetryPassive inductive telemetrySemi-passive inductive telemetryNFC Type-VNFC Type-V
Ring's power consumption0 mW (passive)0 mW (passive)≤ 0.449 mWUltra-low≈ 0.86 mW
Battery life∞ (no battery)∞ (no battery)600–1000 hours—≈ 100 hours
Ring weight6 g1.5 g5 gLightweight—
Inputs5-bit chord typingPress / slide / scrollScroll + pressMotion + NFC dataIndex motion + microgestures
Key metric89.7% typing detection4 ring designs28.0–29.6 MHz FSK3-axis accelerometer≈ 1.4 kbps
Target useMobile text entrySubtle wearable inputAR / VR pointingWearable sensor networksEveryday mobile AR