Controlling Games and Apps Through Muscle Sensors 47
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.
Insensitive (Score:5, Funny)
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i can get my girl to take off every zig when i flex my muscle, you insensitive clod!
Fixed that for you.
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Have you looked at your right arm recently?
Sensitivity (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
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Sorry, no one gives a rats ass who you are. You're just wrong. Muscles signals (EMG) are pulsed, and it isn't hard at all to get a range of values out of that (by counting pulses over time). My company has an EMG detector (that we built) and it's not hard at all to vary the amplitude of your muscle signal over a range.
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Sometimes you are just plain wrong. And sometimes people call you out when you post utter bullshit. It isn't a gender thing. I didn't even notice your nick before this comment and I doubt most others noticed either.
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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).
But with this new technology, I can kick your ass in TetriNET while lifting weights!
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true mobile computing? (Score:2)
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?
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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?
Not with this technology, It seems fine for little things like the examples but not for anything major. Imagine writing an email with muscle movements (or doing the hokey-Cokey as is will appear)
Re:true mobile computing? (Score:4, Interesting)
i did a bit of math ones, as i considered doing a input glove using pressure sensors on fingertips.
what i found that 2 to 4 finger combos should cover the keys of your average keyboard.
that is, pressing between 2 and 4 fingers in sequence, before releasing one or more could act as a single key input.
and this muscle sensor system could work the same way, as the thumb against other finger system could just as easy be replaced with a system where you have a rest state, and then a added strain state where the muscle controlling the finger is being tensed.
i suspect that with training, a person could type out messages while gripping some object, simply by tensing the finger muscles in specific sequences, just like touch typing today, or for that matter playing a piano...
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Actually, I thought that you could create a + sign of keys for each finger. Which is essentially how it works for a keyboard, but there's more diagonals. Basically, each finger has five positions, up, down, left, right, and center/"home row". That allows you to type everything but 'z' with just quick flicks of your fingers in a variety of directions. Since writing is a linear means of information storage (you can only enter one character at a time, no matter how fast you can type, or otherwise it loses its
Moving (Score:1)
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.
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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.
Looking at Wii sales I think it's safe to assume that there are people who do want this technology.
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My concern with the Wii, as a gamer, has always been about the lack of quality. So many of even the PS3/xbox games are becoming 'rhythm games'. Which is code for button-mashing nonsense. In the PS3's motion controller, there's already games like Godfather (&2) where you have to fling the controller through space, while holding buttons, to get it to do something.
All of these gimmicks, all of these excuses to skimp on game development, graphics, story, take away from games. The Wii's 'goal' is to sell gam
I did it again... (Score:1)
Cybering (Score:1)
Don't Taze M- grglgrgg *pop* (Score:1)
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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..."
How about the Truffle Shuffle?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5whaRkuipU [youtube.com]
Input device for a real Power Lifter (Score:2)
Atari invented this in 1984... (Score:1)
so what? (Score:2)
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.
Cool Stuff (Score:1)