Microsoft armband lets people control stuff by twitching

VOLISH BOFFINS ARE working on an armband that will let people interact with their electronics through a flick of the finger.

The scientists developing the band, which is designed to sit on a person’s forearm, is being dubbed MUCI (muscle computer interface, not, as some would believe collective mucus), as it can purportedly recognise which finger movements a person is making by decoding voltage produced by muscle twitches.

Mighty-soft scientists reckon that the new technology is arm-azingly more accurate than certain gadgets already available on the market, like speech recognition software and movement sensing cameras, and believe that in the near future people will be able to use it to type whilst driving or discretely send text messages from inside meetings.

The armband is specially designed to recognise each person’s different movements, and can then understand arm position and finger pressure (apparently three different degrees) to a purported 95 per cent accuracy.

So far the armband has been tested on 10 volish guinea pigs, leading Microsoft boffin Desney Tan to the conclusion that "It works very well if we constrain major arm movements, say, by resting the hand on a desk". So, as long as people are shackled to their desks, it works great.

As far as texting whilst driving is concerned, Microsoft realises that they’ve got a bit of a way to go yet. The team admits that they’re a little uncertain about how that would work, but say that “Morse code is one way”. Right. Because everyone knows morse code. Not in the least distracting having to remember lists of finger taps for each individual letter.

But impractical or not, at least, if nothing else, the armband will be bling. The vole is planning on making its new invention in the form of expensive watches and flash jewellery. Whatever next? Bluetooth in a nose ring? µ

L’Inq
New Scientist