Doctors in the operating room and in cath labs these days use a lot of different pieces of equipment, some of them requiring another person to operate so that sterility is not compromised. In particular, radiological image browsing during surgery can be frustrating when you can’t put your hands on the controls. We’ve seen gesture-based control of computers in the operating room that relies on 3D cameras watching hand movements and ones that track the user’s eyeballs to deduce intentions. Now a new wrist worn device may offer a new, potentially simpler option for controlling a nearby computer without actually having to touch any controls.
The gestureplex was developed by PLUX, a Portuguese firm, and utilizes the Intel Integrated Sensor Solution as its core. It looks like another fitness tracker, but instead it uses electromyography (EMG) sensors to detect muscle contractions around the wrist. The electrodes don’t require a gel and there are three sets of them to achieve high signal quality. The technology can be used to identify different hand gestures to operate a piece of software. This is currently a prototype device and it can certainly be expanded to include additional features that would be powered by other components such as accelerometers, gyros, and pressure sensors.
Here’s Greg Stern, CEO of PLUX, giving a demo of the gestureplex:
Info page: GesturePLUX…