Meta Showcases Wristband That Supports Typing, Navigation Without a Keyboard or Mouse

Meta’s Reality Labs has printed a peer-reviewed article that describes the corporate’s efforts to construct an enter software that’s non-invasive and depends on floor electromyography (sEMG). The firm has been engaged on wristband know-how that’s designed to allow human-computer interplay (HCI) utilizing muscle alerts. Meta says that the know-how permits the wristband to seize a person’s “intent” to pinch, faucet, or swipe, utilizing their fingers, or kind and navigate on a laptop with out utilizing a keyboard or a mouse.

How Meta’s Non-Invasive Wristband Technology Works

A peer-reviewed article within the journal Nature describes the experimental know-how being utilized by the corporate, that depends on a wristband designed to recognise neural alerts that management a person’s muscle tissue and interpret them as instructions to carry out numerous duties. These embody typing or navigating by way of a person interface, with out utilizing conventional enter instruments.

Gestures supported utilizing Meta’s sEMG wristband (Tap to develop)
Photo Credit: Meta

sEMG is non-invasive, and the corporate says that the wristband know-how that it has developed may help customers with “diverse physical abilities and characteristics”. Meta additionally claims that personalising the know-how, utilizing particular person information, may help the machine studying fashions supply as much as 16 p.c higher accuracy.

A video showcasing the know-how on Meta’s weblog demonstrates wrist-based one-dimensional cursor management whereas utilizing the wearable. It exhibits a individual writing the phrases “Hello World” on a flat floor utilizing their index finger, with none stylus or enter software. It additionally exhibits a gesture that strikes a cursor, in addition to recognising sure discrete actions.

The evolution of Meta’s sEMG wristband (Tap to develop)
Photo Credit: Meta

In the previous, Meta has open sourced its datasets with recordings for duties like floor typing, and researchers can now entry a new dataset that accommodates sEMG information performing three duties, recorded by 300 analysis contributors. The firm additionally says the know-how behind its wristband can supply higher efficiency as it’s used, by adapting to a individual’s utilization.

The firm has additionally highlighted that sEMG enter might assist folks with tremor to kind or navigate a touchscreen interface. Meta has additionally partnered with instructional establishments like Carnegie Mellon University, testing these applied sciences for individuals with disabilities.