MYO Armband Offers 3D Gesture Control in Both Real & Digital World (So They Say)

MYO is an armband-based gesture controller being sold with the cheeky tagline, "Unleash your inner Jedi" (at least until Disney sends a cease-and-desist), and it offers control of digital interfaces and real world hardware with the wave of a hand, clench of a fist, cock of some fingers, and so on -- watch:

I'm seriously skeptical it will work as well in the field as the demo suggests, but it does seem more intuitive than other gesture-based solutions, such as the finger-worn 3D mouse I wrote about last week. Perhaps more important than that:

It looks, well, cool. At least for geeks, who are tech's early adopters. At a TechCrunch party last month, some folks were there wearing Google Glass, and some cocktail chatterers there decided it was too damn dorky to be popular. But a wristband that makes computer control almost into a series of dance gestures or martial arts postures? Now we're talking.

Hat tip: Kottke, who thinks MYO looks dorky, to which I say -- dude.

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Comments

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Now this is intriguing and interesting. It seems such an obvious idea that I wonder why everybody is bothering with complex computer vision and tracking, when detecting muscle movement is so much easier and obvious. "Detecting gestures before they happen" — mind reading? No, it's just that these guys are right: the muscles get activated slightly before the fingers move. Too quickly for the eye to notice (we react in 200 ms), but plenty of time for a computer to accurately predict what's going to happen.

Sure, I'm also skeptical at the awesome response shown in the videos, but still, it might be better than Kinect.

And, of course, there is a whole market for "covering up" the bracelet with a more appealing design, to appeal to "fashion geeks" ;) and this will allow MYO to capture not only the market of wearable computing devices, but *fashionable* wearable computing devices...

[cyberserenity]

Many new gadgets in the pipeline. I think many of them will make it more fun and interactive to use virtual worlds. I would like to try this one and building in Second life.

That could be a lot of fun.

[Arabella Jones]

This is a pretty obvious spin-off from work being done on prosthetics, I think. Not the tech that is being used in the field, perhaps, but one of the approaches that was tested. My guess. it needs some sort of alignment/calibration every time you put it on, because getting it in the same place every time might be tricky.

[Arabella Jones]

I remain unconvinced that anyone at Linden Labs can design a good UI using a new sort of controller. Look what they have managed with a joystick...