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Controlling Games and Apps Through Muscle Sensors
A team with members from Microsoft, the University of Toronto, and the University of Washington have developed an interface that uses electrodes to monitor muscle signals and translate those into commands or button presses, allowing a user to bypass a physical input device and even control a game or application while their hands are full. The video demonstration shows somebody playing Guitar Hero by making strumming motions and tapping his fingers together, a jogger changing his music without having to touch the device, and a man flexing a muscle to open the trunk of his car while he carries objects in both hands. The academic paper (PDF) is available online.
Slashdot readers don't have any muscles, you insensitive clod!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
A muscle sensor is no less a physical input device than a button. Handsfree, perhaps, but still a physical input device.
Now I can jack off and spawn camp at the same time, at least for 2 or 3 minutes.
This works fine for off/on states, but not graduated ones where a range of input is needed. Muscles are binary -- they are off, or on. At least, at the cellular level. But when they're put in bunches, only some are activated while others are not, which leads to a range of possible force levels. Effectively monitoring neural activity here requires a large number of sensors to accurately determine how much force is being requested and then translate that into a digital representation. As well, do not forget that in the human body, motion is comprised of two separate inputs from the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system: And while complementary, these two are not always perfectly in balance. This is why prothetic limbs have to be computer-assisted and lack fine motor control: They simply can't get a good enough input resolution.
So yes, it'll be great for mouse clicks (binary), but I'll still own your ass in a video game in anything that uses a vector (analog).
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
so how long until the computer is a box on the hip/back/wherever, and the IO is a pair of semi-transparent oleds (see recent samsung and lg product demos) glasses and this worn up the sleeve somewhere?
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Like the wii, touchpads, motion tracking and countless other control methods, this one fails to address a key issue: I don't bloody want to move my hands other than to type.
Penguins can be fascists too
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromyography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myoelectric_prosthesis
I for one welcome our new muscle controlling overlords
Five words describe me on a normal day. two words describe me the rest of the time. can you guess?
One of these days, I'll stop opening my trunk every time I type something
Best Jack-o-Lantern ever.
will be changed forever.
If this catches on I can retire my slimjim and lock picks and just get a tazer for all my wretched car-thieving ways.
A couple of people have mentioned this already, but unintentional activation seems to be a likely problem. Maybe opening your trunk should require a series of motions, like a physical password of sorts, to make sure you're doing it intentionally.
"Let's see...right foot in, right foot out, right foot in, shake it all about..."
An IBM Model M keyboard! Why, it changes small muscle movements in my forearms into letters you can read on the screen!. All without any fancy electrodes.
Honestly, guys. If we go to that level, it shouldn't take long that we can monitor the tongue and vocal cords. Using those to produce words is superior to any cryptic 2 to 4 finger combos (requires less training, etc.). Only exception would probably be programming, etc. in which you write stuff that is slow to say out lout ("if($ > x) { ... }") but I am sure that you could make some shortcuts for that use.
It sounds perfect for amputees. Guitar Hero without hands has got to be a total pain in the stump.
Sounds like the ideal input device for something like this!
I can see the fnords!
The OCZ NIA already does this for face muscles (glance left/right and jaw muscle) and is years old.
What is funny is Atari did this back in 1984 with their "Mindlink" headband controller: http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/mindlink.html It was quite good, too bad the company switched gears to primarily computers at the time and didn't go forward with the controllers. Its amazing how people forget about stuff that was invented decaded ago and announce them today as if they just discovered the wheel for the first time. Then you have the exact opposite - you have older technologies that have been reborn with a whole new purpose - take the old Atari joysticks from the 70's and 80's - just simple 5bit hardwired controllers, nothing really special in today's world, but they were the controllers by which all others were guaged in the 70's and 80's... Now there is a company who has brough those very same controllers back, but now they pack USB circuitry in them and can be used on PC's and Mac's - cool stuff indeed! http://www.legacyengineer.com/storefront Next thing you know, someone will bring Pong back and claim its this innovative immersive head to head combat game! ;-)
Curt
EMG sensors have been around forever; why would you want to attach them to healthy people? If you attach them to a functional muscle, you end up overloading functional signals in a way that's going to cause problems sometimes.
This is some pretty cool looking stuff! The person talking in the video sounds kind of like Johnny Chun Lee (the guy that did the Wii Remote whiteboard & head tracking projects before Microsoft employed him), is he involved in this at all?