Cryptheory – Just Crypto

Cryptocurrencies are our life! Get an Overview of Market News

Facebook’s new wristband can move digital objects by interpreting brain signals

3 min read

Facebook has developed a wristband that could allow its wearer to move digital objects simply by thinking about it by reading their brain’s neurological signals.

The social network unveiled videos of the device to the US media earlier this week, explaining that the wristband contains sensors to detect the movements the brain is thinking about making.

It uses electromyography (EMG) to translate the electrical activity from the brain’s motor nerves to the person’s hand, effectively allowing a wearer to scroll through a digital menu simply by thinking about doing so.

While the technology is still a prototype, with no defined name or sale date, it has significant implications for the replication of human actions in both augmented and virtual reality and how we interact with neurological-powered interfaces.

The unnamed wristband could also enable its wearer to type on any surface as though it was a physical computer keyboard, registering the taps of their fingers as though they were striking keys.

Facebook researchers also demonstrated “force actions”, named in homage to Star Wars, involving a person pinching with their fingers in the real world in order to hold and control virtual objects in augmented reality.

https://tech.fb.com/inside-facebook-reality-labs-wrist-based-interaction-for-the-next-computing-platform/ (Photo: Facebook)
The wristband is being developed to work in conjunction with Facebook’s forthcoming augmented reality smart glasses (Photo: Facebook)

“You actually have more of your brain dedicated to controlling your wrist than any other part of your body, probably twice as many neurons controlling your wrist and the movement of your hands than is actually dedicated to your mouth for feeding and for speech,” said TR Reardon, director of research science at Facebook Reality Labs, according to CNBC.

Facebook first announced it had started experimenting with brain-reading technology in April 2017, when Regina Dugan, former director of US military agency DARPA and then-head of Facebook’s secretive Building 8 hardware division, announced the company’s plans to build systems dedicated to decoding speech-focused neural activity.

“Just as you take many photos and decide to share some of them, so too, you have many thoughts and decide to share some of them in the form of the spoken word. It is these words, words that you have already decided to send to the speech centre of your brain, that we seek to turn into text,” she said at the time.

Ms Dugan, who left Facebook 18 months later, also acknowledged the privacy concerns raised by the technology.

“To be clear, we are not talking about decoding your random thoughts,” she said. “That might be more than any of us care to know. And it’s not something any of us should have a right to know.”

The prototype, which was bolstered by the company’s acquisition of neural interface start-up CTRL-Labs in 2019, is being developed to work in tandem with Facebook’s forthcoming Ray Ban smart glasses, which are expected to go on sale later this year.

The new wristband is not akin to mind reading, the company outlined in an extensive blog post, pointing out that while humans may have many thoughts, they only choose to act on some of them.

“When that happens, your brain sends signals to your hands and fingers telling them to move in specific ways in order to perform actions like typing and swiping. This is about decoding those signals at the wrist — the actions you’ve already decided to perform — and translating them into digital commands for your device,” it said.

“It’s a much faster way to act on the instructions that you already send to your device when you tap to select a song on your phone, click a mouse, or type on a keyboard today.”

All content in this article is for informational purposes only and in no way serves as investment advice. Investing in cryptocurrencies, commodities and stocks is very risky and can lead to capital losses.
BlackRock (IBIT), the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), Fidelity (FBTC), Ark Invest/21Shares (ARKB), Bitwise (BITB), Franklin (EZBC), Invesco/Galaxy (BTCO), VanEck (HODL), Valkyrie (BRRR), WisdomTree (BTCW), Hashdex (DEFI)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *