Making any surface an interface

The creators of Welle (pronounced vell-uh) wanted to maximize control of devices and applications. The MaxusTech team came up with a way to allow users’ hands to draw letters and other symbols on any surface to create an interface to control smart devices, such as lights, TVs, speakers, doors, thermostats, cameras, curtains and fans.

Welle uses a Bluetooth connection, embedded sonar and a touchless gesture control algorithm to create its capacity as a universal remote. The embedded sonar transmits signal pulses and collects the reflected energy back from targets. The characteristics of the echoes are extracted and then translated into different instructions to Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Welle recognizes standardized gestures and lets users assign gestures or handwriting shortcuts to interact with devices and apps. A user can be in one location, write something in front of the Welle and it appears in another location on a Welle device. The technology, in other words, advances the definition of “surface.” Innovative minds will determine how far the new definition will reach across industries.

Based in Shenzhen, China, MaxusTech provides human-computer interaction technologies that “make machines sense the world.”