And you thought Kinect was cool. Now there鈥檚 a gesture control device that looks like a sweatband. It lets you dispense with touch and control everything from computers to flying drones, just by moving the muscles in your forearm.
The Myo, built by Canadian start-up firm based in Kitchener, Ontario, aims to bring gestural interfaces into the mainstream. Electrodes embedded in the armband detect activity in a user鈥檚 muscles as they contract or relax in the course of moving the hand and arm. The Myo transmits these signals wirelessly to software that interprets the movements into commands.
鈥淲e really have this belief that technology can be used to enhance our abilities,鈥� says Stephen Lake, co-founder of Thalmic Labs. 鈥淭his is a way of using natural actions that we鈥檝e evolved to intuitively control the digital world.鈥�
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Lake and his team built Myo using electrodes that work without making direct contact with the skin, unlike medical electrodes. The first generation can recognise around 20 gestures, some as subtle as the tap of a finger 鈥� and it can ignore random noise generated by other body movements.
Myo鈥檚 creators envision it as an easy way to interact with everything from web browsers to video games to small drones. The first generation of the product, is expected to cost $149 and ship later this year. It will come with software that will allow any Windows or Apple Mac machine to recognise the gestures we use on touchscreens 鈥� like a vertical swipe to scroll down a page, or a pinch to zoom (see video above).
鈥淚t鈥檚 not very often that a new, affordable and convenient interface technology comes along, so I think a lot of programmers are going to want to try it,鈥� says , a partner in a start-up incubator called . This firm is based in Mountain View, California, and has provided Thalmic Labs with funding in exchange for a 7 per cent stake in the company. 鈥淚 think so far we鈥檝e only thought of around 1 per cent of its potential applications,鈥� says Blackwell, who is also a computer programmer.
Thalmic Labs is not the first firm to try making a device that recognises gestures by sensing muscle activity. In 2008, Microsoft created a prototype called MUCI that worked in a similar fashion to Myo, but needed medical electrodes, which are not feasible outside a laboratory setting.
There are also devices that use cameras to precisely track users鈥� hand motions, but they are either in early stages of development, or not portable. 鈥淢aybe this couldn鈥檛 have been foreseen by early researchers working with cameras, but people don鈥檛 like having cameras watching them all the time,鈥� Blackwell says. 鈥淭halmic solves that problem nicely.鈥� Though the first generation of Myo is only just launching, the team is already imagining ways to integrate their rigs with augmented reality devices like the head-mounted display, Google Glass.
鈥淚f they combined with , I think it would be huge,鈥� says , who co-founded software firm CognoVision of Toronto. 鈥淪omething like Thalmic鈥檚 technology is super-useful since you can do interactions in a subtle way, which is important when you鈥檙e in a public venue.鈥�
鈥淲e鈥檙e interested in seeing just how closely we can integrate technology into our daily lives and give people superpowers, if you like,鈥� says Lake.
Wear tech鈥� look great?
Making wearable technology fashionable is tough 鈥� think belt-mounted cellphones and beepers. But iPod earbuds and headphones seem to work.
How do you get the mix right? Google is working hard to make Project Glass rigs look hip, even convincing clothing designer Diane von F眉rstenberg and her models to wear prototypes of the head-mounted displays at Fashion Week in New York last year.
Myo bands (see main story) could be an easier sell, says computer scientist Shahzad Malik. 鈥淚 could see these bands becoming smaller and smaller, or being made in different colours. Or there could be clothing with it built in,鈥� he says.
