Ctrl-labs’ armband lets you control computer cursors with your mind
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
This could make my life 3.7 million percent easier. Seriously.
>How does it do that? By measuring changes in electrical potential, which are caused by impulses that travel from the brain to hand muscles through lower motor neurons. This information-rich pathway in the nervous system comprises two parts: upper motor neurons connected directly to the brain’s motor center, and lower axons that map to muscle and muscle fibers.
Perhaps it could be configured to work with neck muscles instead?
Fortunately, like most Quads I have some movement below the level of injury. If you're that way inclined, here's a YouTube video of the amount of positive control I have over my body below the neck (My Range of Movement [1]). It's using that and my voice that I can post here, work, bother Sam Harris on Twitter etc etc.
So ideally it would go on my finger, or somewhere on my lower forearm such that I could use both my finger and the muscles in my lower arm to do different things.
I definitely could not have anything wrapped around my neck as it's too fragile, and the thought of having something wrapped around my neck gives me horrors. Maybe scalp muscles could be used, that would be cool.
Thanks
[1]:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjnBpiirfr7LL-mUk9uSpZw/vid...
http://www.choosemuse.com/developer/#sdk
Key Features
• Discover and connect to all Muse headbands
• Receive raw EEG, accelerometer, gyroscope, and battery data
• Leverage built-in algorithms for band powers, eye blinks, and jaw clenches
• Record and/or playback data to and from a file
• Full documentation
It’s geared toward mobile, but I imagine you could have an iOS/Android companion app that acts as a remote for a computer over Bluetooth/WiFi.
I tried a quick search to see if anyone was working on this as a general input device for people who can’t use mouse/keyboards but it didn’t turn anything up.
This section: "Then he strapped the bracelet on my arm. I had worse luck — the thumb on the computerized hand reflected the motions of my thumb, but the index and pinkie finger didn’t — they remained stiff. Berenzweig had me recalibrate the system by angling my wrist slightly, but to no avail." and this: “It acts like an antenna,” he said, “so it’s susceptible to interference.”
Sounds a lot like my experience. If you can't make a system people can just pick up an use right away, I predict it will just be too much hassle for anyone to want to use. And throwing buzzwords like ML at the problem doesn't seem to change that.
so the setup might be shit, but if the system itself works well, and the expected value of it working well actually bears fruit, then theres still a chance it'll all work out
Think of it like this. If you have the choice between a regular mouse with 3 buttons, and a mouse with 22 buttons that randomly flies off to some direction for 3 seconds every 2 minutes or so, which would you chose as a power user?
Obviously the first, because reliably having 3 buttons is just so much better than a wonky mouse even if it does have 19 more buttons (that you likely wont use anyway).
It's not really a case of them needing to find a new paradigm, the technology needs to get to a place where someone (like the interviewer) cant at the very very least just pick it up and use it. And after that they need to get to a point where it's reliable and consistent. EEG headsets have been trying to get there for some 10-15 years now without much luck, and these guys might have a good funding pitch claiming that "it's different, we are using muscles!" (EEG headsets pick up your facial muscles as well, but lets forget that for a second) and of cause "We're using Machine learning to build a model!" (machine learning has already been employed on EEG headsets naturally, but it's not a problem of analyzing the signals, it's about getting consistent signals from hardware that freaks out if a metal cart is nearby).
I'm not saying these guys can't do this, I'm just saying that nothing they've shown or done puts them apart from the other companies who have spend 10 years failing to provide something other than cool looking demos in the field.
Your many mouse example fails in that learning it doesnt actually lead to significant benefit, so ofc it'll never see converts; but if it did, if it was actually better than the three button mouse, then the initialization cost is overriden by the long-term benefit, and it remains possible for it to succeed.
My point is primarily about the initialization; if this tech's only substantial negative is that it has to be trained to function correctly, and its benefit is substantial, then there remains a path to success. That is, the training step (alone) does not necessarily kill the technology.
I can't think of any good examples off the top of my head
In machine learning terms, it seems that they can manage supervised learning (given a known task, they can figure out how signals correspond to movements) but not unsupervised learning (given a new user's signals, they can't decode them without knowing what the user is trying to do).
So I can imagine this working if new users first had to complete a short initialization sequence (maybe gamified in some way) but could then use it without errors more common than typos when using a keyboard.
The promise was lofty, but the device was near unusable in practice.
In the demo application you could learn to move the ball around a little bit but it was ridiculously hard.
Nothing like Macross Plus...
"Within just a few seconds, moving the cursor with thought became almost second nature, and I was able to steer it up, down, and to the left and write by thinking about moving — but not actually moving — my hand."
That's quite a strong statement. If true, I'd hop on that bandwagon.
Let's hope this device holds up when it's released, and doesn't turn into another Nintendo Power Glove.
On the other hand there's Magic Leap. Which from the sounds of things will turn out to be somewhat scam-ish. :/
Bonus points: It will probably be more affordable as well.
Next steps after that would be programmers coding away with their minds..?
Imagine literally being able to work anywhere. On the beach, climbing a mountain, anywhere the hardware works.
So programmers of the future might just look like high-tech monks meditating.
One day we will all be gods.
Or the entire world will be our cubicle.
On the obituary "Lost grip due to an auto-play ad at full volume...". ;)
Personally, I'd really like to be able to use something like this for CAD design / performing operations on 3D models. :)
For bonus points, multi-user interactive product design sessions.
That should help to reduce iteration time in product development.
Why not measure the minute signals of the mouth to predict word commands instead of hand movements?
An example would be complex poses such as the "gun" shape with a hand as opposed to "pouting" your lips, there's so much opportunity to finely tune the motion from open hand to gun shape but it's more linear with pouting. However I'm not sure where or how the "thinking" part would play into this, eg physical muscle movements vs intention of muscle movements.
And there might just be too much noise and involuntary mouth movements that would make it impractical (eg, breathing, swallowing), plus the fact you'd look like a psychopath mumbling to yourself.
I have a feeling that actual human neural activity does not generalize well, but that ML models needs to be good at adapting to individuals.
In all of these systems I've seen so far, there is a ton of calibration needed.
The user should be able to do that.
Edit: say it is a two way street.
System takes input and renders it right back as a shock, or vibration, something.
There then is an exchange.
System presents its message, user present theirs.
Simple things, like shock, or pressure, vibration on and off.
Then levels.
Then modes.
Together, that results in "thought as action", much like we get when we do things with our bodies.
Once there, mapping that to things like cursors, could be standardized, IMHO.
Moving cursors with your hand means a use of calories.
Not using calories means less effort for the same work. That’s a gain.
“Dogfooding” is also a term for using your own products like you expect customers / clients to use them. In that usage it isn’t a criticism of the product’s quality.