iRing Read the paper

Penn State / UIST ’26

iRing.

Rich interaction.
Right on your finger.

A smart ring with a multi-point capacitive touch screen. Familiar gestures. Immediate visual feedback. All on one curved surface.

Paper (ACM publication) Watch demo GitHub
The iRing prototype, with a transparent case and a curved OLED screen displaying its name
01 / iRing prototype6.4 g. Fully on-finger.
Runze Liu*Taiting Lu*Zhenghao LiYixi WangShengming YuanMahanth Gowda
Pennsylvania State University* Equal co-primary authors
01 / OverviewInput + output, together

A small surface.
A richer interaction.

What if you could touch a ring and see its response, right where you interact?

iRing brings capacitive multi-touch and a flexible OLED display to the same finger-worn surface. It closes the loop between input and feedback, enabling brief, glanceable interactions with a thumb or the other hand.

Lightweight prototype
6.4g
Flexible OLED display
160×32
Familiar touch gestures
6
Capacitive electrodes
2×6

See it in action.

Project demonstration / 02:40

Direct touch, on-ring feedback, and everyday application scenarios. Video from the project presentation.

02 / HardwareDesigned in layers

Built around
your finger.

A custom flexible touch PCB sits over the OLED display. A compact main board, curved battery, and 3D-printed housing bring sensing, computation, and feedback into a wearable ring.

Designed as an open-source, reproducible platform for exploring on-ring interaction.

Exploded iRing hardware, from left to right: inner cover, curved battery, main board, flexible OLED display, touch sensing PCB, and outer cover
01 Inner cover02 Arc battery03 Main board04 OLED display05 Touch PCB06 Outer cover
The touch layer

Transparent.
Flexible. Multi-touch.

Two rows of six electrodes on a transparent polyimide FPCB preserve display visibility. Thin traces connect the sensing areas to the capacitive touch controller.

iRing touch PCB with labeled FPC connector, touch controller, and two rows of six capacitive sensing electrodes
Processor & wireless
nRF52832 / Bluetooth LE
On-board sensing
PPG + IMU + temperature
Touch controller
MPR121 / 12 channels
Touch sampling
50 Hz / local processing
Power
60 mAh curved battery
Estimated component cost
$46.43 wholesale / $120.03 retail
From components to prototypeAssembly process
  1. Ring components laid out before assembly01 / Prepare parts
  2. Components being soldered to the main board02 / Solder circuits
  3. Battery connection being soldered03 / Connect battery
  4. The flexible OLED being placed around the electronics04 / Install OLED
  5. Touch PCB being added to the display05 / Add touch PCB
  6. Electronics being inserted into the case06 / Assemble case
  7. The inner ring being fitted07 / Fit inner ring
  8. The completed ring prototype being tested08 / Test prototype
03 / Nano interactionsSmall movements. Direct feedback.

You already know
the gestures.

Tap, slide, pinch, and spread—familiar touch primitives adapted to an ultra-small, curved display. Nano interactions connect compact finger movements to immediate visual responses.

Hover or select a gesture to explore. Use arrow keys when focused.

Choose a nano interaction gesture
On-device pipeline
  1. Read 12 electrodes50 Hz sampling
  2. Resolve contactsThresholds + debounce
  3. Recognize gesturePosition + motion + duration
  4. Update displayImmediate local feedback
04 / ApplicationsMade for the moments in between

A little interaction.
Throughout your day.

The prototype explores how direct touch and glanceable feedback can support brief tasks, from controlling music on the move to navigating text and checking sensor readings.

A runner wearing iRing for on-the-go media control
01 / On the go

Media control

Adjust volume wirelessly while running, with feedback directly on the ring.

Text shown on iRing during a touch interaction
02 / At a glance

Text manipulation

Slide to scroll through messages. Pinch or spread to adjust text size.

A person viewing a health measurement on the ring display
03 / On the body

Health monitoring

Navigate sensor measurements and view heart rate and blood oxygen on the display.

A small game running on the curved ring display
04 / In the moment

Interactive games

Play Brick Breaker with touch and ring rotation, following the game on your finger.

The paper also explores menu navigation and brief LLM-mediated interactions.

05 / Evaluation12 participants / Cross-user evaluation

Small scale.
Measurable precision.

A user study evaluated gesture recognition, learning, usability, comfort, and social acceptability. The results demonstrate the feasibility of direct touch interaction on a ring.

97.7%
Gesture recognition

Across the six touch gesture classes.

98.0%
Tap location

Across the 12 touch regions.

96.5%
Slide recognition

Direction and segment count.

A short-term prototype study: long-term comfort, durability, and everyday use remain open research questions. Participants favored brief tasks such as media control and message scrolling; larger displays remain useful for tasks needing more visual space or precision.

06 / ResearchUIST 2026 / Detroit, MI

The paper

iRing: Rich Interaction on Smart Ring with Multi-point Capacitive Touch Screen

Runze Liu*, Taiting Lu*, Zhenghao Li, Yixi Wang, Shengming Yuan, and Mahanth Gowda

The 39th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
November 2–5, 2026 · Detroit, Michigan

Read the paperACM / DOI: 10.1145/3830398.3830549GitHubGitHub / OmniLab-Dev/iRing_opensource
Cite this work 
@inproceedings{liu2026iring,
  author = {Liu, Runze and Lu, Taiting and Li, Zhenghao and
            Wang, Yixi and Yuan, Shengming and Gowda, Mahanth},
  title = {iRing: Rich Interaction on Smart Ring with
           Multi-point Capacitive Touch Screen},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 39th Annual ACM Symposium
               on User Interface Software and Technology},
  series = {UIST '26},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  doi = {10.1145/3830398.3830549}
}

Supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, CAREER-2046972.