Myo Armband is Au Naturel Wearable Computing

We are on the threshold of a whole new way of interacting with computers and by extension anything that communicates using the Bluetooth wireless protocol. Fellow Canadians Thalmic Labs have taken gesture interaction to the Nth and are releasing the groundbreaking Myo Gesture Control Armband, early in the new year.

The armband translates the motions of the arm and the tiny-electrical signals from moving muscles into computer commands. The result is a seamless fusion of human computer interaction and a truly magical sense of control. The Myo could render key tools of the computer age — keyboard, mouse and touch-screen — obsolete and usher in a new era in computing.



Having arrived at such a wonderful moment in time, I can not help but reflect back on some of the earlier efforts at achieving a wearable controller. Below are just a few snapshots depicting how far we have come.

The unwieldy Mattel Power Glove from 1989
An incrementally sexier design from the 1990s
The full body armour Ironman solution!
There are also more recent USB based gesture controllers like the Leap Motion available, however, they are not wireless or mobile. Human expression is our innate gift, our hands are our natural tools and computers need to conform to us, so lets not get this backwards. The future certainly looks like it will blast-off, so have fun!