While styluses aren’t very common these days, it looks like Microsoft’s new invention could change everything. The company is reportedly working on a prototype stylus that could, after a software upgrade, work with any existing display or device. This new stylus doesn’t work like any regular stylus – it features a tiny camera that is used to look at the display up close, and count the number of pixels it passes by to track its movement. This information is then sent wirelessly back to the computer which then turns that into instructions for moving the cursor on the screen. The camera even looks out of the side of the stylus body at an angle and takes into consideration its angle and how different pixels are in and out of focus.
According to reports online, internal reviews about the stylus have been pretty good so far, but a lot of work still needs to be done before we’ll see it on sale. Firstly the company would need to create a compact image sensor that has a resolution of 512 by 512 pixels in order to be able to track motion smoothly. Sounds like some interesting tech – hopefully it won’t take too long to arrive. Read up more at Technology Review.