Brain Band
Wearables, particularly watches, can be helpful if you need to look at the time or date, or even the number of steps you have taken during the day, but in order to accomplish the myriad of functions included in most wearables, you need two limbs, one arm to hold the device, and a hand to press the buttons or touch sensors. This usually means that whatever you are doing, you must stop and use both hands to perform any functions. There are some wearables that respond to voice commands and a few that respond to gestures, but by and large, if you want to do anything with most wearables, you need both hands.
Gesture based systems have been under development for years and despite standardization, has never quite caught on, so wearable developers look for other alternatives to make it easier for watch and other wearable users to perform more than one or two basic functions or control other devices with their devices. While we don’t usually mention products that are under development by small companies, given that many never actually see the light of day or are far from what the developers have promoted, we came across an interesting ‘accessory’ for the Apple (AAPL) Watch that allows the user to perform functions with only one hand.
The accessory is a watch band that is loaded with sensors that monitor electrical signals that are being sent to your brain as you move your fingers and through AI algorithms (of course) figures out which fingers are moving and translates those functions into control signals for your Apple Watch, which means you can control the watch, and consequently an iPhone or similar device just by moving the fingers on one hand. Typically gesture-based devices use cameras to recognize hand or facial expressions, which means the user either has to be wearing AR/VR type glasses that contain a camera. In the case of the Mudra device, the gestures are ‘sensed’ rather than ‘seen’, allowing single handed operation. Thus far we have seen only demos, but bypassing the need for optical recognition of any sort radically simplifies the control process and could encourage users and developers to use gestures rather than voice functions, which have their own issues.
The Mudra Band is part of an Indiegogo campaign that has raised $216k for Wearable Devices Ltd (pvt), an Israeli company that is a graduate of the Samsung Runway accelerator program and won a CES 2021 Innovation and ‘Best Wearable’ honor in January. The company currently sells a development kit for $500 or a $3,000 Enterprise kit that allows the user to incorporate the Mudra gesture control into other products, with a tentative shipment date of March for the retail band, which sells for $179. We note that we have no stake in this company or campaign and have an interest only from a technical standpoint.
Watch the video below to better understand how it works.
Gesture based systems have been under development for years and despite standardization, has never quite caught on, so wearable developers look for other alternatives to make it easier for watch and other wearable users to perform more than one or two basic functions or control other devices with their devices. While we don’t usually mention products that are under development by small companies, given that many never actually see the light of day or are far from what the developers have promoted, we came across an interesting ‘accessory’ for the Apple (AAPL) Watch that allows the user to perform functions with only one hand.
The accessory is a watch band that is loaded with sensors that monitor electrical signals that are being sent to your brain as you move your fingers and through AI algorithms (of course) figures out which fingers are moving and translates those functions into control signals for your Apple Watch, which means you can control the watch, and consequently an iPhone or similar device just by moving the fingers on one hand. Typically gesture-based devices use cameras to recognize hand or facial expressions, which means the user either has to be wearing AR/VR type glasses that contain a camera. In the case of the Mudra device, the gestures are ‘sensed’ rather than ‘seen’, allowing single handed operation. Thus far we have seen only demos, but bypassing the need for optical recognition of any sort radically simplifies the control process and could encourage users and developers to use gestures rather than voice functions, which have their own issues.
The Mudra Band is part of an Indiegogo campaign that has raised $216k for Wearable Devices Ltd (pvt), an Israeli company that is a graduate of the Samsung Runway accelerator program and won a CES 2021 Innovation and ‘Best Wearable’ honor in January. The company currently sells a development kit for $500 or a $3,000 Enterprise kit that allows the user to incorporate the Mudra gesture control into other products, with a tentative shipment date of March for the retail band, which sells for $179. We note that we have no stake in this company or campaign and have an interest only from a technical standpoint.
Watch the video below to better understand how it works.
Watch the video below to better understand how it works.
youtu.be/pnY1QzwFIKE
cdn.idropnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/26140117/Mudra-Band-GIF.gif
youtu.be/pnY1QzwFIKE
cdn.idropnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/26140117/Mudra-Band-GIF.gif
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