Over the last five years, the touchscreen has supplanted the mouse and keyboard as the primary way that many of us interact with computers. But will multitouch enjoy a 30-year reign like its predecessor? Or will a newcomer swoop in and steal its crown? One up-and-comer, Thalmic Labs, hopes that the next ruler will be 3D gesture control.
Like Microsoft Kinect and the upcoming Leap Motion, MYO lets you control a computer with Minority Report-like gestures. But unlike those devices, which rely on optical sensors, MYO employs a combination of motion sensing and muscular activity.
The actual MYO device is an armband. When worn, it senses gestures, and sends the corresponding signal (via Bluetooth 4.0) to a paired device. The company claims that the muscular detection (via proprietary sensors) “can sense changes in gesture down to the individual finger.”
Uses
![If enough developers get on board, the sky's the limit](https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/ddc74f2/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2880x1620+0+0/resize/1440x810!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Farchive%2Fmyo-2.jpg)
In the company’s promo video (which you can watch below) we see people controlling iTunes tracks, playing Mass Effect 3, and giving boardroom presentations – all via gesture. The video closes with a skier (wearing a Google Glass-like device) posting his first-person extreme winter sports video to Facebook with a few flips of the wrist.
One thing you won’t see in the video is anybody using anything other than one arm. Since the device wraps around one arm, that limb – including its corresponding hand and fingers – is all that it can sense. MYO’s optical-based competition – Leap Motion and Kinect – don’t have this constraint.
MYO is already up for pre-order for US$149. The company has also launched a developer API to get a jump on software support. Thalmic Labs says the MYO will ship in “late 2013.”
Can MYO stand out in a gesture-control field that will include Microsoft, Leap Motion, and - who knows - maybe Apple? Check out the video below and decide for yourself.
Source: MYO via TheNextWeb