Having come upon this latest smart glove, an interface technique being developed by neurologist Michael Linderman and his colleagues, I was reminded of my grandpa, who owing to Parkinson’s disease had hand tremors and found it very difficult to write. But with the introduction of these fingerless gloves, which automatically translate hand gestures and movements into text by way of electrode sensors, I see a great future for people suffering with Alzheimer, paralysis or Parkinson’s.
As PopSci mentions, in testing phase:
six volunteers, using a digital pen, wrote the numerals 0 to 9 fifty times while wearing the prototype glove, which recorded the electrical activity of eight muscles in their hand and forearms. A computer correlated the electrical data with the output from the digital pen, and pattern recognition taught the computer to derive written symbols from the bursts of electrical activity.
Linderman’s team also used a technique called discriminate analysis to test how well the computer could recognize muscle-movement patterns as corresponding with particular written characters.
We’ve come way too deep into interface technology now; this gesture based texting technique is pretty different and thus has potential to make it into medical applications and elsewhere too. But how long and what it would take in the process, only time would tell. I personally have my fingers crossed.
Via: PLoSONE
