Enabling Always-Available Input with Muscle-Computer Interfaces

Summary:

Our fingers allow us to be one of the most dexterous creatures on the planet, allowing us to interact with our environment in very intricate ways.  However, one limitation that we've come to experience is that when interacting with computer devices we must always use a physical control as a medium such as a keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc.  In this paper, the concept of utilizing an EMG muscle-sensing band around the forearm to determine finger movements is explored for the purpose of potentially interacting with devices without the need to physically touch the device.  One example is using an mp3 player while running. It does not matter where the mp3 player is placed on the body, the player is incredibly inconvenient to manipulate while moving often causing the user to stop running to change a song or increase the volume.  Therefore, it was proposed that the user, wearing the muscle-sensing band, could make a series of gestures that correspond to certain functions of the mp3 player.  This would allow the user to keep their hands free or at least free to do something else.

The user study was carried out in three parts, each testing to see whether or not certain gestures could be recognized with differing grips:

1. small or no object in hand
2. tool in hand
3. heavy load in hand.

The results yielded a 79% accuracy while not holding anything, a 85% accuracy while holding a travel mug, and an 88% accuracy while carrying a weighted bag.

Discussion:

I feel like this concept could easily be extrapolated to other areas as well. If the accuracy of the EMG devices could be enhanced then sign language could be translated to text incredibly easy or prosthetic limbs could be more easily removed if the muscle sensors were external rather than embedded.  I understand that the user study was specified for a very particular set of gestures and grips, but I definitely agree with the author's statement that thorough and robust testing could yield much more significant results.
So, I may have chosen to read this paper because it's incredibly close to my senior design project which I thought was convenient.