Apple has submitted a patent for a highly sophisticated multi-touch interface that would allow users to control a device by the way they move their fingers and hands.

Drawings submitted with the document – which show two hands hovering over a flexible, screenlike device – have fuelled rumours that Apple could be working on a touch-screen tablet similar to a large-scale version of the iPod touch.

The patent was filed in June by Wayne Waterman from Fingerworks, an Apple-owned company that played a role in the development of the iPhone. The document claims the patented interface will offer “unprecedented integration of typing, resting, pointing, scrolling, 3D manipulation and handwriting into a versatile, ergonomic computer input device”.

Apple says that the multi-touch interface will not only be able to interpret gestures made by the whole hand or individual fingers, but also discern what the user might want to do, understanding whether the user intends to type, write or draw, and launching the appropriate programs, menus or interfaces as needed.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog, a website dedicated to Apple rumours, said that the patent could result in a device akin to “the iPhone’s keyboard… combined with a Wacom tablet”.

“Naturally this patent application has people buzzing about the long-rumoured tablet, but properly realised this device could easily be applied to any Mac as a one-stop replacement for the keyboard, mouse, and any other number of input devices,” writes the site’s Chris Rawson.

However, experts were keen to caution that just because Apple has filed this patent does not necessarily mean the company is working on a tablet computer, nor that the technology described within the patent will become commercially available in the next few months.

Apple regularly files patents that do not form part of its key product line-up, such as one application in 2007 that showed the iPod navigational click-wheel built in to a Mac computer keyboard.

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