Video: Armband controller exploits twitching muscles

Wait, let’s see that again (Image: Thalmic Labs)

And you thought Kinect was cool. Now there’s a gesture control device that looks like a sweatband. It lets you dispense with touch and control everything from computers to flying drones, just by moving the muscles in your forearm.

The Myo, built by Canadian start-up firm Thalmic Labs based in Kitchener, Ontario, aims to bring gestural interfaces into the mainstream. Electrodes embedded in the armband detect activity in a user’s muscles as they contract or relax in the course of moving the hand and arm. The Myo transmits these signals wirelessly to software that interprets the movements into commands.

“We really have this belief that technology can be used to enhance our abilities,” says Stephen Lake, co-founder of Thalmic Labs. “This is a way of using natural actions that we’ve evolved to intuitively control the digital world.”


Lake and his team built Myo using electrodes that work without making direct contact with the skin, unlike medical electrodes. The first generation can recognise around 20 gestures, some as subtle as the tap of a finger – and it can ignore random noise generated by other body movements.

Myo’s creators envision it as an easy way to interact with everything from web browsers to video games to small drones. The first generation of the product, is expected to cost $149 and ship later this year. It will come with software that will allow any Windows or Apple Mac machine to recognise the gestures we use on touchscreens – like a vertical swipe to scroll down a page, or a pinch to zoom (see video above).

“It’s not very often that a new, affordable and convenient interface technology comes along, so I think a lot of programmers are going to want to try it,” says Trevor Blackwell, a partner in a start-up incubator called Y Combinator. This firm is based in Mountain View, California, and has provided Thalmic Labs with funding in exchange for a 7 per cent stake in the company. “I think so far we’ve only thought of around 1 per cent of its potential applications,” says Blackwell, who is also a computer programmer.

Thalmic Labs is not the first firm to try making a device that recognises gestures by sensing muscle activity. In 2008, Microsoft created a prototype called MUCI that worked in a similar fashion to Myo, but needed medical electrodes, which are not feasible outside a laboratory setting.

There are also devices that use cameras to precisely track users’ hand motions, but they are either in early stages of development, or not portable. “Maybe this couldn’t have been foreseen by early researchers working with cameras, but people don’t like having cameras watching them all the time,” Blackwell says. “Thalmic solves that problem nicely.” Though the first generation of Myo is only just launching, the team is already imagining ways to integrate their rigs with augmented reality devices like the head-mounted display, Google Glass.

“If they combined with Google’s Project Glass, I think it would be huge,” says Shahzad Malik, who co-founded software firm CognoVision of Toronto. “Something like Thalmic’s technology is super-useful since you can do interactions in a subtle way, which is important when you’re in a public venue.”

“We’re interested in seeing just how closely we can integrate technology into our daily lives and give people superpowers, if you like,” says Lake.

Wear tech… look great? Making wearable technology fashionable is tough – think belt-mounted cellphones and beepers. But iPod earbuds and headphones seem to work. How do you get the mix right? Google is working hard to make Project Glass rigs look hip, even convincing clothing designer Diane von Fürstenberg and her models to wear prototypes of the head-mounted displays at Fashion Week in New York last year. Myo bands (see main story) could be an easier sell, says computer scientist Shahzad Malik. “I could see these bands becoming smaller and smaller, or being made in different colours. Or there could be clothing with it built in,” he says.