For Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, augmented and virtual reality will be the next big computing platform. Thus, after years of research, the company has unveiled an experimental gadget to wear on the wrist that interacts with augmented reality glasses, a combination that recalls the one between mouse and computer that one day could be overcome.
“A wrist wearable device has the advantage of easily serving as a platform for processing, battery and antennas by supporting a wide range of sensors,” the company explains. Last year it announced “Project Aria”, a laboratory where to build the first generation of augmented reality wearable devices: not only bracelets, but also augmented reality glasses. Also for this reason, Facebook Reality Labs was born in Menlo Park, the division of the social network that deals with augmented and virtual reality.
The test of this wrist device follows the purchase by Facebook, in 2019, of a CTRL-labs neural interface startup that has made bracelets that can detect and interpret electrical signals from the brain and transmit them to a computer. .
How does it work
And in fact the device, explains Facebook, “uses sensors to translate the electrical impulses of motor neurons transmitted from the spinal cord to the wrist to the hand into digital commands that can be used to control the functions of a device. In this way it is possible to communicate clear one-bit commands to the device, with a highly customizable level of control that can be adapted to many situations ”. All with the utmost precision: “The signals that pass from the wrist are so clear that the EMG can deduce even the slightest movements of the fingers (even just a millimeter)”. This means that it is possible to transmit input effortlessly. Indeed, it could even “perceive the intention to move a finger”.
“What we’re trying to do with neural interfaces is to allow people direct control of the machine thanks to signals from the peripheral nervous system – the nerves outside the brain responsible for hand and finger movement,” says Thomas Reardon. Director of Neuromotor Interfaces at FRL, who joined the FRL team when Facebook acquired CTRL-Labs in 2019. Elon Musk’s Neuralink company is also working on brain-machine interfaces.
Sean Keller, scientific director of Facebook Reality Labs, explained how the company is trying to solve technical problems (e.g. distinguish relevant information from information that is not), and address the ethics and privacy issues that this technology inevitably poses.