As an engineer, you often find solutions to problems, not the other way around. However, once in a blue moon, a solution comes along that appears so interesting and full of potential that you feel compelled to dream up applications for it. Such is the case with Thalmic Lab's Myo armband. The inventors describe Myo as a "gesture control armband". It is an elastic armband that recognizes the user's finger movements and hand rotations by sensing electrical activity in the forearm muscles, then reports them over Bluetooth to receiving devices. This presents a whole new channel for user interface (UI) design and human computer interaction (HCI). Thalmic Lab put out a video last year illustrating just some of the many possible applications. TLDW:
Seeing this video, I began to think of other possible apps. EDIT: Bear in mind the Myo has no feedback in itself except for haptic and Bluetooth signals.
The Myo seems perfect for disabilities applications too:
These are ideas thought of "in reverse" so to speak starting with the solution; who knows what developers will come up with when faced first with a problem and then realizing something like the Myo exists off-the-shelf for $149. It's been over a year since I placed a Myo pre-order, and the final polished product is nearing release. I can't wait for the shipment to come in and see if it's time we take human computer interaction to the next level.
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Glad I could direct your attention to something you find neat, Brian.
Sure a demo or at least a video is in order once the shipment comes in and then after something cool is built with it.One-to-one use cases with a human and a computer can be neat, though lately I've been thinking if there is an interesting application if multitudes of users were wearing a Myo connected through their smartphone connected to each other.
Agree on the one-click shopping.. don't want to derail your thread into a discussion on Amazon's data collection efforts.. suffice to say I use their products and generally like them but have misgivings nonetheless..
Yes if there ever is a truly decent MMI that will just let ideas appear that would be awesome... I just think it's interesting whenever a new tech comes out and everything else is declared dead. Not to imply you were doing that.. just seems like lately with oculus, amazon phone, kinect, glass, etc.. there has been a lot of this star trek tech hitting the consumer grade.. cool nonetheless!
Myo is actually one of the neater ones I've seen so thanks for writing about it. I think what's really cool is when these sensors can be used to augment activities we already do. So for example imagine giving a myo to a musician or a conductor... or a dancer and letting them control music.. or lighting etc..
Maybe when you eventually get yours do a live presentation?
@brian Can't speak much to the Fire Phone without having used one irl. I must say the built-in hardware manifestation of One-click Shopping for anything you can point your phone at is a bit too off-putting for me to consider getting one. The Kinect has been very well-received by the market. That reaffirms we will see different human computer interfaces proliferate for us to interact with what marketers call "The Internet of Everything".
Agree we won't see keyboard/mouse supplanted soon for doing work. I still wouldn't mind typing with my hands behind my head though. :)
What are your thoughts on the 'hand jerk' controls for the new Amazon phone and/or how Kinect has been received?
Definitely see how non-button interfaces have great niche applications but it's hard to unseat the simplicity of pushing something. I think it's good to experiment with, but ultimately pretty much everyone uses a keyboard and/or pointer to do substantial work - vice arm-waving or voice control.
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