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Microsoft Says Goodbye GUI, Hello MUI
theodp writes "On New Year's Eve, the USPTO revealed that Microsoft is seeking patents for controlling a computer by simply flexing a muscle. Microsoft proposes using Electromyography (EMG) sensors and a wired or wireless human-computer interface to interact with computing systems and attached devices via electrical signals generated by specific movement of the user's muscles. 'It is important to consider mechanisms for acquiring human input that may not necessarily require direct manipulation of a physical implement,' explained the inventors. 'For example, drivers attempting to query their vehicle navigation systems may find it advantageous to be able to do so without removing their hands from the steering wheel, and a person in a meeting may want to unobtrusively communicate with someone outside. Also, since physical computer input devices have been shown to be prone to collecting microbial contamination in sterile environments, techniques that alleviate the need for these implements could be useful in surgical and clean room settings.'"
It's the sound of all the slashdotters coming on the idea of not having to use a mouse when porn surfing. Just move your, eh, muscle to the direction.
So blind people will be able to use this MUI (since their muscles work)? How does it relay things back via muscles? Oh wait, you mean it's still a GUI? After all, even a keyboard-controlled graphical UI is still a GUI, not a KUI. FFS.
Anyone remember Q-branches invention of wrist muscle triggered darts? There has to have been loads of similar devices in science fiction! Just goes to show 90% of patents should never be approved.
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Windows Admin: I told him not to install Service Pack 2
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
...but probably terrible in implementation.
Calibration for each individual person's body type? Tech support that involves actual physical human contact? (shudder) Epileptics would lose all of their work with regularity.
In my mind, this is one of those things where we've already made the intuitive leap to an input that makes sense and now people want to go back and think of something that takes more effort to replicate what we've already done in a more convoluted way.
Isn't the one where the put fine needles straight into your muscles.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Wow, never thought I'd see MS releasing software for the Amiga!
Many years ago, at a RobotFest in Austin TX, I watched a dancer demonstrate triggering of multiple MIDI-controlled musical instruments from EMG sensors.
He danced, and the instruments played NON-preprogrammed accompaniment to his dance. If you watched CAREFULLY, you could see which muscle movements were triggering which sounds.
And he was GOOD. He'd obviously spent a LOT of years learning dance, and he'd obviously spent quite a bit of time mastering his new instruments.
As an AC says below : there are already medical applications for computer-processed muscle signals for prosthetics. I wouldn't like to see Microsoft act as a gatekeeper there, especially as they aren't even responsible for the founding research.
One of the applications essentially claims a classifier to learn the signals corresponding to various movements, and then classifies unknown inputs to indicate what movements they correspond to. That one is extremely well-known, and it'll hinge on whether Microsoft managed to think of some specific signal feature not mentioned in the prior art. Personally, I would bet that one's dead in the water, but you can never be sure without doing a proper search.
The other one essentially claims a wearable device with EMG sensors. That one is going to hinge on one of the various automatic features they've claimed that distinguishes it from all the different prosthetic devices that have EMG sensors mounted in them.
" and a person in a meeting may want to unobtrusively communicate with someone outside"
This sounds like that sign/hand/body language the Bene Gesserit used in Dune
I sat down to write a new sig tonight and all I did was make the chair warm.
Well, I can think of something else I could use to query the navigation system while keeping my hands on the wheel. Granted, it's not usually used for communicating with a computer, but it does have a high bandwidth input and output interface, and it's way more fun than trying to flex my nonexistent muscles. And the collaborative mode really rocks.
Prior Art?
:T:R:A:N:S:
Microsoft had been hit by hardware bugs (faulty hardware, pentium bug, etc), software bugs (don't know from where to start) and they are ensuring now they will be hit by bugs by the old definition. A simple fly could force you to move a lot of muscles, and your corporate database will be gone.
And could be far worse. You face some critical app, you know that you should not even think on moving that muscle and, of course, you will..
And will be interesting to see what happens with people that can't move certain muscles or do some combos, like i.e. doing the vulcan greeting, or closing just one eye... the new generation of computer disabled people is in the making.
Well considering the fact that MSFT spends over 5 billion a year on R&D, with very little to show for it in the way of actual products hitting shelves, it would be nice if they actually had something to show for all that cash spent.
I mean I can understand completely why MSFT shareholders aren't too happy with them right now. All that cash blown and the stock has pretty much been flatline for the better part of a decade while Apple and Google exploded. The last thing I remember coming out of MSFT R&D was that PC table (surface I believe its called) and I know it reminds me of something...hmmm....where did I see an idea like that? Oh yeah a Disney movie from 26 years ago.
Seriously, with 5 billion in cash a year, that's the best they can do? A PC table and a way to control your OnStar by flexing your wrists? At least if it has a medical use they can get something for it, but I doubt it will even make back 1/100th of what they've blown in R&D this year alone.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Because if there is anything they understand in Redmond, it's getting things done by flexing a little muscle.
I remembered that most of the new work on prosthetic arms these days focuses on using EMG to drive the arm behaviour (including Dean Kamen's new bionic arm), and there's a bunch of stuff done (and papers released) with driving the mouse for people with disabilities.
Surely this patent application has to be thrown out, and isn't Microsoft just wasting the Patent Office (and our) time with applications that are so easily shown to have been demonstrated before?
Look Ma, No Pen! Electrical Impulses Can Reproduce Handwriting
SmartHand: Merging Mind and Machine
Application of facial electromyography in computer mouse access for people with disabilities
Demonstrating the feasibility of using forearm electromyography for muscle-computer interfaces
Electromyography sensor based control for a hand exoskeleton
What's the original part here? The patent application does not specify any specific software application (just talks about interpreting the signals), so all the prior art should hold.
Sounds great. Hope they don't get the patent.
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So blind people will be able to use this MUI (since their muscles work)? How does it relay things back via muscles? Oh wait, you mean it's still a GUI?
The keyboard and mouse are a form of muscular control.
So is the Wii controller. Project Natal.
That doesn't make alternative input device any less useful or significant.
I can hear the geek going into cardiac arrest if Microsoft did patent muscular feedback - and control.
Tech of enormous medical and military significance.
Unlimited commercial potential.
The current MS PR team could use Olivia Newton John's "Lets Get Physical" as a launch theme song, then hire on Arnold Schwarzenegger to host ads about the new user interface, which leads to the use of the term "No Pain, No Gain" for users having to do contortions for some operations.
They could call the MUI OS "MS Fit" I guess (heh that really works to... Monkey dance, throwing chairs, etc. yeah!) :-D
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Now I imagine a new movie, where Arnold Schwarzenegger defeats the BSOD by the might of his muscles alone. (Of course, it may not work as well now, since he's the flabby Governator.)
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
exactly. There is quite a bit of prior art for this at universities all over the world, hell its been on tv for at least the last 3 years (Scientific American Frontier with Alan Alda loves to do fluff pieces on technology research that could apply to the elderly or handicapped).
...Muscle of Love
Well considering the fact that MSFT spends over 5 billion a year on R&D, with very little to show for it in the way of actual products hitting shelves, it would be nice if they actually had something to show for all that cash spent.
On the contrary, I'm delighted to hear that Microsoft is helping to neutralize itself by blowing billions on research that has no return on investment. Keep up the not-so-good work, guys!
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Despite the examples given in the parent, I can't honestly think of a single practical use for an input device like this (as has been mentioned, Microsoft has a really warped idea of what qualifies as a "GUI"). I mean what would you use it for? A mouse may not be the perfect hardware for controlling your virtual world, but it's amazingly versatile. You can also let go of a mouse. I can just imagine a surgeon using this and then having to sneeze, or playing WoW with your new MUI device getting killed because you had to scratch your nose during combat. Driving?! Are they insane?? If you're not moving your hands from the wheel, what part of you IS moving?! I don't often flex my muscles while driving as that can often lead to involuntary sudden deceleration.
Im sorry. While we do have the technology to let your child walk properly, we are unable to sell or even give you a device, due to a cease & desist letter from Microsoft. While I know we invented it, 20 years later this XYZ company registered the patent. Im sorry, but we need to protect the rights of this multinational. Seriously, is this the scenario we want in 2010? I say we need a reform.
Whats the harm in yelling 'Computer, end program!'? You could be living in Star Trek! Go on.. give it a try.
Ummm... if that $5b a year produces something like this, then it is totally worth it. Do you realize how many applications there are for a muscle-based input device? I can tell you right now using a home computer is probably least among them. We're talking things like prosthetics, a whole range of military applications, video games, and that's just scratching the surface. This is the kind of thing that can generate whole new industries.
If what they have is real MS will have made far more than they've spent on R&D for the past 5-10 years, maybe more. This is why you spend so much on R&D with no results for years - penny pinchers with no vision will kill the future of a company by killing its R&D program in the name of saving a few bucks a year. Idiots.
Furthermore, the core technologies, the ones developed by the R&D teams, in Vista and Windows 7 are fantastic. It was mostly political bullshit and poor design decisions that ruined Vista. They seem to have corrected the mistake with 7, and you get what I would argue is currently the most advanced OS on the market.
Look at Google - 95% of their income comes from their advertising revenues from adwords and searches. If they stopped all of their new research (chrome, android, etc), they would probably double their profits for the next two years. However, I doubt it would take more than three years before they started to decline, and after four or five they would be replaced by Bing as the biggest search engine on the net.
People who focus on this year only, and not on future potential, don't create great companies. They tend to be the ones who destroy them. God forbid your board of directors can see no further than the current quarter's earnings. That company is doomed.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I can imagine that someone at the Patent Office wants a job at Microsoft when they graduate.
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RCA and Polaroid achieved a great level of wealth through introduction of new technologies in media and film, and having done so, spent their energies at the peak of their wealth employing the very finest minds researching and perfecting that "next big thing", that unfortunately for them, nobody wanted. Microsoft seems to be going down the same exact path.
This is my sig.
what kind of a computer response would you get by tightening your anal sphincter?
You can't handle the truth.
Microsoft is seeking patents for controlling a computer by simply flexing a muscle.
Microsoft has been controlling computers for years by flexing its muscles.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Research into this has been going on for quite some time in the area of artificial limb control by amputees. DARPA has been doing quite a bit of research in this area, as described in the book "The Department of mad Scientists".
Have gnu, will travel.
Seriously, why not just invest some time learning how to properly use the keyboard? People are always looking for something, like voice to text, that will allow them to be as proficient as their peers without having to learn to type. If muscle controls are anything like speech to text software the training sessions alone are going to take almost as much time as just learning to type. They should just pick up a copy of mavis beacon and have at it (which wouldn't have been necessary now had they actually paid attention in their high school typing or computer classes).
M$ isn't looking to return back on investment for one year, or even a few years when it comes from R&D. They're looking for another alchemist's stone, which has the power to turn bullshit into gold.
That's what they had with Windows and the home PC.
That's what they're searching for now.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Microsoft's stock doesn't need increase in value: unlike Google and Apple, they pay a regular dividend to their shareholders. If Google and Apple's stock doesn't go up, their shareholders don't make any money. And stock price itself is practically meaningless except relative to itself. The market capitalization of MSFT is substantially higher than AAPL or GOOG and if you compare their P/E ratios they're not that overvalued, unlike Google and Apple. What that means is as a shareholder you can buy MSFT stock today and the company's performance, and your consequent return, is immediately in line with what you paid for it. Buying Google and Apple stock is a basically a bet that those two companies are capable of 50%-100% growth over the next few years... or rather that you can find someone else who believes that. Note: I don't own stock in any of them.
The stock market is more complex than the high-growth tech stocks.
As for research, I used to agree with you, but they've finally announced a pretty significant application of a lot of their research: Project Natal. You may have heard of it.
Natal. You mean the reflex to the Wii? Yeah typical MS "innovation" indeed.
"Ummm... if that $5b a year produces something like this, then it is totally worth it. Do you realize how many applications there are for a muscle-based input device?"
That mouse you're using to post to slashdot is a muscle-based input device. Without muscles, you couldn't click the button. Without muscles, you would not be able to move your eyes to read, nor would you be able to turn your head in any direction to even scan across letters or images.
Hate to say it but prior art goes back to the abacus. We've used our muscles for interacting with things since our very inception, even.
This is nonsense, at least if we keep with the typical hyped up slashdot summaries.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Most popular technologies are popular precisely because of porn! It's a wet dream for any inventor to get noticed by the porn industry
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine -- Robert C. Gallagher
Maybe some day our Slashdot editors will be able to resist the urge to post a Microsoft public relations puff piece. Until then, let's keep in mind what we know about this company and not let their thinly disguised advertisements impress us.
What does this have to do with my rights online?
*start pedant mode*
Old news, new technology.
Watch some reruns of 'Wild, Wild West'{mid 1960's TV series}...The main character frequently uses a modified card sharp's mechanical device strapped to his inner wrists/forearms to deliver into his palm some tool to extricate himself[usually a Derringer], in lieu of a playing card.(the devise was based on a late 1800's device)
*/end pedant mode*
So it may have already been patented...and expired.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I don't wanna be Johnny Raincloud here but this sounds to me like it's a bit outside of Microsoft's reach.
... I can see it now...I hook up while cooking dinner and end up deleting my kernel64.dll file. :)
Perhaps in the future this is a feasible thing but I think for the foreseeable future computer-human interfaces will be limited to mice, keyboards, and touch screens.
Voice control isn't even near up-to-par with manual input. Something tells me that a muscle controlled computers are a bit beyond that, not to mention the impracticality of having to hook yourself up to your computer every time you want to use it.