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"We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the user to calibrate the device in an appropriate way," says Tan. The software learns to recognize EMG signals produced as the user performs gestures in a specific, controlled way.
The algorithms focus on three specific features from the EMG data: the magnitude of muscle activity, the rate of muscle activity, and the wave-like patterns of activity that occur across several sensors at once. These three features, says Tan, provide a fairly accurate way to identify certain types of gesture. After training, the software could accurately determine many of the participants' gestures more than 85 percent of the time, and some gestures more than 90 percent.
Especially in the early stages of training, a participant's gestures need to be carefully guided to ensure that the machine-learning algorithms are trained correctly. But Tan says that even with a small amount of feedback, test subjects "would fairly naturally adapt and change postures and gestures to get drastically improved performance." He says that having users trigger the appropriate response from the system became an important part of the training process.
"Most of today's computer interfaces require the user's complete attention," says Pattie Maes, professor of media arts and sciences at MIT. "We desperately need novel interfaces such as the one developed by the Microsoft team to enable a more seamless integration of digital information and applications into our busy daily lives."
Tan and colleagues are now working on a prototype that uses a wireless band that can easily be slipped onto a person's arm, as well as a "very quick training system." The researchers are also testing how well the system works when people walk and run while wearing it.
Ultimately, says Tan, full-body control will lead to fundamentally new ways of using computers. "We know it has something to do with gestures being mobile, always available, and natural, but we're still working on the exact paradigm," he says.
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This document is part of the “How-To Guide for Most Common Measurements” centralized resource portal. This tutorial provides a detailed guide for measurement and device considerations to take temperature measurements using thermocouples. Get an introduction to thermocouples, which are inexpensive sensing devices widely used with PC-based data acquisition systems. Also review some specific thermocouple examples and learn how thermocouples work and ways to integrate them into a data acquisition measurement system.
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flared0ne
395 Comments
Seems pretty straightforward...
"All you need" (heh) is a "bracelet" or arm-band with piezo-sensors; very similar to the home-builder's "stud finder", which operates by detecting density changes beneath a surface.
Against a wall, the sensors detect a dense framing member by its dampening factor; against a wrist (or around a bicep or tricep), the sensors detect variations in tendon position and muscle tension during gestures.
The power and the beauty comes from the fact that you don't NEED to track specific 'things', you're set up to detect and extract a 'gestalt signature' of familiar motion from within a wide range of gestures.
One of the simplest possible training paths: spend awhile typing on a keyboard and using a touch-pad, while 'training' (discrimination and feedback) is based on the generated text and resulting cursor movements. After awhile, you can take away the keyboard, but you can still keep typing.
A little bit of tactile and audio feedback, and you're ready to bewilder your in-flight neighbors with your typing fingers and touchpad gestures on your empty tray-table. Then all you need is the wrap-around sunglasses with the heads-up display.
I have timestamped drawings and schematics from twenty years ago for a wearable "sleeve" design which would suffice to capture both planar 'typing' gestures AND the more-involved holographic-manipulation gestures common to Avatar, Tony Stark, and the Sci-fi channel in general... All waiting for sufficiently potent DSP devices (and animation capture packages) to become available.
We live in interesting times.
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