We’re on the cusp of a new technological era thanks in no small part to the ubiquity of smart phones. They’ve already begun to augment us in ways we didn’t expect, usurp industries that failed to adapt and have created a fledgling industry that’s already worth billions of dollars. The really interesting part, for me at least, is the breaking down of the barriers between us and said technology as whilst it’s all well and good that we can tap, swipe and type our way through things it does feel like there should be a better solution. Whilst we’re still a ways off from being able to control things with our brains (although there’s a lot of promising research in this direction) there’s a new product available that I think is going to be the bridge between our current interface standards and that of more direct control methods.
Shown above is a product called the MYO from Thalmic Labs, a Y-Combinator backed company that’s just started taking pre-orders for it. The concept for the device is simple: once you slip this band over your arm it can track the electrical activity in your muscles which it can then send back to another device via BlueTooth. This allows it to track all sorts of gestures and since it doesn’t rely on a camera it’ll work in far more situations than other devices that do. It’s also incredibly sensitive being able to pick up movement right down to your fingers, something which I wasn’t sure would be possible based on other similar prototype devices I had seen in the past. Needless to say I was very intrigued when I saw it as I instantly saw it as a perfect companion to Google’s Glass.
All the demonstration videos for Google Glass shows it being commanded by a pretty powerful voice interface with some functions (like basic menu navigation) handled through eye tracking. As a technology demo its pretty impressive but I’m not the biggest fan of voice interfaces, especially if I’m in a public space. I then started thinking about alternative input methods and whilst something like a laser keyboard works in certain situations I wanted something that would be as discreet as typing on a smartphone but was also a bit more elegant than carting around that (admittedly small) device. The MYO could provide the answer to this.
Now the great thing about the MYO is that they’re opening it up to developers from the get go, allowing people like me to create all sorts of interesting applications for the device. For me there’s really only a single killer application required to justify the entry cost: a simple virtual keyboard that uses your muscles. I’ve read about similar things being in development for a while now but nothing seems to have made it past the high concept stage. MYO on the other hand has the real potential to bring this to fruition within the next year or two and whilst I probably won’t have the required augmented reality device to take advantage of it I’ll probably end up with one of these devices anyway, just for experimentation.
With this missing piece of the puzzle I feel like Glass has gone from being a technical curiosity to a device that I could see myself using routinely. The 1.0 MYO might be a little cumbersome to keep around but I’m sure further iterations of it will make it nigh on unnoticeable. This is just my narrow view of the technology as well and I’m sure there’s going to be hundreds of other applications where a MYO device will unlock some seriously awesome potential. I’m very excited about this and can’t wait to get my hands on one of them.
