Gestures

Back in 2019, Artiphon launched a Kickstarter for a battery-powered handheld music-creation tool called the Orba. Now the company has returned to the platform with Chorda, a portable synth, looper and MIDI controller shaped like a short guitar neck.

We've seen a number of projects over the years that turn gestures and body movement into music, including the Fitbit-like Mictic and Beatjazz Hands. Now Sony is jumping on stage with a wearable effects generator for musicians called Motion Sonic.

Artiphon first came to our attention in 2012/13 with a strange-looking digital instrument called the Instrument 1 that leveraged the processing power of a docked iPhone to create music. Now the team is back with a handheld synthesizer called Orba.

A collaboration between the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has resulted in a mid-air gestural tone and beat controller called the GripBeats.

A team from the University of Antwerp is developing a robotic sign language interpreter. The first version of the robot hand, named Project Aslan, is mostly 3D-printed and can translate text into fingerspelling gestures.

No doubt you've needed to control a device while keeping your hands free or while keeping your dirty hands clear of your expensive tech. Where hopelessness and frustration may previously have abounded, a new gesture-control device called the Bixi – now raising funds on Kickstarter – could help.

A video game called Rover that was developed by the US military uses an Xbox Kinect is being used to help train dog handlers to detect subtle cues from canines that are used to sniff out buried improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Air guitar specialists and other highly animated faux musicians may be set to get a little more reward for their efforts with Aura, an electronic instrument that translates hand gestures into music.

A group at MIT Media Lab has produced a light bulb-sized device capable of turning any surface into a touch screen interface.

An experimental new system can turn any flat surface into a multi-touch interface.

A woman suffering from aphasia can now send emails thanks to her son's customized Kinect interface.

Mogees uses a simple contact microphone to turn any hard surface into a playable musical interface.