A team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, developed a wearable technology that detects hand gestures. The tool uses electric signals and couples artificial intelligence with biometric sensors. The system finds its use in interacting with almost any electronic device type. It particularly is beneficial in the field of prosthetics.
A professor of Electrical Engineering at Berkeley, Ana Arias, collaborated to design an Armband that has the capacity to read electrical signals. The band does so at different points (around 64 points) on the forearm. These electrical signals are then sent to an electrical chip. The chip uses an AI system designed especially to correlate the signal patterns of the forearm with certain hand gestures.
The team behind the wearable technology successfully taught the algorithm as many as 21 individual hand gestures
These gestures include thumbs-up, flat hand, holding up a particular finger, and a fist. Like other Artificial Intelligence software, this system too has to learn how the electrical signals correspond with individual hand gestures. For doing this, each user has to wear a particular type of cuff while making the gesture.
One of the top advantages of the device is that it computes data directly on the chip instead of sending it to another computer. It not only speeds up computing time but also preserves biometric data. The Senior Author of the paper, Jan Rabaey, stated that the device is not yet ready for commercial use, but it will be available soon after a couple of changes.
