INPUT LIFT-OFF DETECTION AND DRIFT COMPENSATION FOR PRESENCE-SENSITIVE DEVICES

A mobile computing device (e.g., smartwatch, smartphone, tablet computer, laptop computer with touchscreen input, etc.) may determine when a user has lifted their finger, pen, pencil, stylus, or other input element from a presence-sensitive input device (e.g., resistive touchscreens, surface acoustic wave touchscreens, capacitive touchscreens, projective capacitance touchscreens, pressure sensitive screens, acoustic pulse recognition screens, etc.) and may compensate for drift in the touch centroid resulting from the lifting off of the input element. The mobile computing device may use a sliding window analysis, a recurrent neural network, or other algorithms to determine when a user has begun moving the input element away from the input device such that the input device ceases detecting the presence of the input element (e.g., a lift-off event). Based on the lift-off event and characteristics of the gesture prior to the lift-off event, the mobile computing device may adjust the gesture termination location to correct for drift caused by lifting off the input element. In this way, the techniques described herein may enable the mobile computing device to more accurately determine the location at which the gesture terminated