Some of the eye-catching devices shown at last month’s Wearables Conference will be a few years from “prime time,” but show the future of wearable motion devices. Two of the biggies will come from Georgia Tech (www.gatech.edu) research.

The first is called the Ham Bone. It uses two piezoelectric microphones which are pressed to the bases of the user’s wrist. They “listen” to the creaks and rubbing noises of the wrist as it turns. In addition it can identify gestures as the user rubs a finger around near the device.

The second uses a set of proximity sensors in a diamond pattern. The sensors follow motions made by the other hand – and that is an important concept.

“We are tying to figure how to make interfaces with items that are too small to use with touch buttons,” explains Thad Starner. He is founder and director of the Contextual Computing Group at Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Computing and School of Interactive Computing.

Georgia Tech has a long history of research into gesture-based devices. The gestures made can be sent via Bluetooth to a device which the user is controlling.

According to Starner, the devices are just the latest iteration of research from the school’s research efforts. They are based on standard MEMS from Analog Devices.

Before joining the Georgia Tech faculty in 1999, Starner gained international recognition at the MIT Media Laboratory as one of the world’s leading experts on wearable computers during his doctoral work “Wearable Computing and Contextual Awareness.”

Much of what Starner does is in the area of pure research, as opposed to practical or commercially-driven work. “My research is five to 10 years out (from the market),” he says. His goal is to create demonstrations today that will morph into products in the years to come.

“I get to live in the future, quite literally,” he says. In fact, he has been using early versions of devices like those that will be displayed and demonstrated at the Wearables Conference since 1993.