Control your phone or PC with a flick of wrist

Gesture control is coming to your PC, TV and smartphone - and no, we’re not talking about the kind that uses the webcam to perform a few basic functions.

Gesture recognition is a new controlling scheme that can be developed to communicate with electronic devices including phones, computers, smart TVs, and even new wearable devices such as Google Glass and the Oculus Rift. Several gesture recognition schemes have been introduced in recent years including wired gloves and camera-based detection.

This new device, however, uses muscle activity-based commands transmitted through Bluetooth – not rocket science, but close to it, people. Thalmic Labs, a North American startup, has come up with the armband called ‘Myo’, what it claims is the world’s first muscle activity electromyography-based gesture control device.

So how does it work? Thalmic says the Myo armband is an all-in-one gesture recognition system that is capable of recognising different sets of hand gestures based on electrical signals from the forearm’s muscles.

Read More