Zuckerberg: Neural Wristband For AR/VR Input Will Ship 'In the Next Few Years' (uploadvr.com) 30
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that it's working on a finger tracking neural wristband that will be ready to ship "in the next few years." UploadVR reports: Appearing on the Morning Brew Daily talk show on Friday, Mark Zuckerberg said "we're actually kind of close to having something here that we're going to have in a product in the next few years." [...] An entirely different approach to finger tracking is to sense the neural electrical signals passing through your wrist to your fingers from your brain, using a technique called electromyography (EMG). Theoretically this could have zero or even negative latency, perfect accuracy, work regardless of lighting conditions, and not be subject to occlusion. When discussing the technology in 2021 Reardon claimed that a recent breakthrough enabled decoding the activity of individual neurons for "almost infinite control over machines." Occlusion-free finger tracking of this quality and reliability could enable precise control of complex interfaces with incredibly subtle movements of your hand resting on your lap, making it an ideal input method for headsets and AR glasses. [...]
So how will this arrive in a Meta product? In early 2023 an internal Meta AR/VR hardware roadmap leaked to The Verge, revealing details about Quest 3, the existence of the headset now rumored to be called Quest 3 Lite, and the cancelation of the 2024 candidate for Quest Pro 2 in favor of a more ambitious but "way out" model. But this roadmap also mentioned that Meta was planning to release the neural wristband alongside the third generation Ray-Ban smartglasses in 2025 as the input method.
According to that roadmap, two models of the wristband will be offered at different price points - one with the neural input tech only and another that also has a display and camera to act as a smartwatch too. A second generation of the wristband will also apparently act as the input device for the true AR glasses Meta plans to launch in 2027. We should however note that this plan or the timeline may have changed in the year since.
So how will this arrive in a Meta product? In early 2023 an internal Meta AR/VR hardware roadmap leaked to The Verge, revealing details about Quest 3, the existence of the headset now rumored to be called Quest 3 Lite, and the cancelation of the 2024 candidate for Quest Pro 2 in favor of a more ambitious but "way out" model. But this roadmap also mentioned that Meta was planning to release the neural wristband alongside the third generation Ray-Ban smartglasses in 2025 as the input method.
According to that roadmap, two models of the wristband will be offered at different price points - one with the neural input tech only and another that also has a display and camera to act as a smartwatch too. A second generation of the wristband will also apparently act as the input device for the true AR glasses Meta plans to launch in 2027. We should however note that this plan or the timeline may have changed in the year since.
It knows when you are getting close (Score:2)
Double Wristband (Score:2)
Time to put a double-wristband to Zuckerberg, i.e. handcuffs.
Time to get excited! (Score:2)
It's will be time to get excited "in the next few years". Until then we should suppress our emotions like a robotic Zuck.
Re: (Score:2)
I Can English? Apparently not.
s/It's/It/
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It's will be time to get excited "in the next few years". Until then we should suppress our emotions like a robotic Zuck.
I think robot Zuck is just frustrated that he cannot generate the same hype train that Apple and Elon are able too. He has been bleating on about the VR/AR stuff for nearly a decade now, and I have never met anyone who had any enthusiasm for his products - even among the gave devs I know.
Then along comes Apple with an obscenely priced headset and he's likely suddenly found a 10 fold jump in interest in VR/AR and half those people think he's just copying Apple. You've got to feel for the guy - he is just inc
You are the product (Score:3)
>> I have never met anyone who had any enthusiasm for his products
That is normal. The gimmicks and websites he makes is not the products.
The products of Facebook is the user data mine.
You are the product.
Physical issues (Score:3)
I imagine this will need to be a fairly snug fit to get a decent read... which I unfortunately know is something that can exacerbate carpel tunnel. I love my smart watch, but sometimes it doesn't love me so much.
Still, imagine gesture controls with this thing used to control whatever. Wave at a smart lock that knows your bracelet, and it unlocks. Make the right finger sign and move your hand to control lighting, media playback, to answer a hands-free phone, etc. Could be a fun toy. ...And one I would never, ever buy from anything Zuckerberg had a hand in. It will require a link to your phone and every data point it gathers will be his to do with as he pleases. I don't even have to get into specific scenarios, that's just a giant 'no' on principles alone.
Only on humans (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are several interesting actual facts in your post, from which you have inferred (and then in turn implied) a bunch of things that just aren't true.
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imagine gesture controls with this thing used to control whatever
We can do gesture controls with cameras without having to wear some bullshit on our wrists. How about imagining a useful application for this technology? All I can come up with is control of protheses, which is great for people who need them, but useless for everyone else. If I have hands, and I'm sending impulses to them, they can just do stuff like press buttons.
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Remember the video that came out around the time Facebook acquired the startup that invented this thing? Of course you do! The amazing thing about this device is that you don't have to actually move your hands. The problem with gesture controls for cameras is fatigue. To work on a spreadsheet using the new apple AR device and pinch gestures you'd have to be more jacked than popeye.
Also biomechanics (Score:2)
I imagine this will need to be a fairly snug fit to get a decent read... which I unfortunately know is something that can exacerbate carpel tunnel.
The part that makes it worse (both for you and for making this work in general) is that by the time the nerve has reached the carpal tunnel, it's mostly only sensory input (that's why you feel pain when it's compressed) and a lot let muscle motor output (that's why it won't work).
Most of the stronger muscle that move your finger (specially for strong motion like strong grasp) are in your forearm.
At the level of the wrist, there isn't any nerve output for those muscle, even the muscle themselve have endeded
No ankle version required at first (Score:2)
Legs will be added later.
Full self driving ??? (Score:2)
Why is neural interface research headed by creeps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Somehow the last thing I want is have my central nervous system connected to anything made by Musk or Zuckerberg.
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This could be the cage fight we've all been hoping for. Have someone chipped by both companies and wait to see which computer overlord manages to convince the body to rip out the other.
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This could be the cage fight we've all been hoping for. Have someone chipped by both companies and wait to see which computer overlord manages to convince the body to rip out the other.
My biggest disappointment of the last few years was Musk and Zuck canceling their planned fight. I was really hoping we'd finally see some bazillionaires reach into the gutter in a public spectacle of blood and fury. Or at least a limp-wristed slap-fight. Instead, we just have to tolerate them getting creepier and creepier and wanting to track more and more of our lives. I can't wait until Musk can cloud-collect every brainwave and Zuck can cloud-collect every movement in our bodies. How genuinely terrifyin
acausality? (Score:2)
Negative latency? They've invented time travel? SIGN ME UP!
Re: acausality? (Score:2)
I suspect (but I didn't bother looking it up) that negative latency means the device can read the input faster than you would have otherwise moved your finger.
Seems like BS (Score:2)
Way back in the 90s a lot of people thought quite a bit about wearable computers and decent easy input to them. This is not that different from decent input to VR systems. Obviously Apple with its VR model and stupid floating keyboard doesn't have it right. Who cares if you finger flexes are mapped? You can do that just monitoring a few muscle twitches. You don't need to map neurons at all. Especially for things like typing what is wrong with the 3 joints per finger times 9 other fingertips per joint
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Who cares if you finger flexes are mapped?
We do because it's more accurate than a "muscle twitch" that could mean anything from "grasp object" to "flip the bird." One is probably the action you wanted, and one is probably the action you absolutely don't want depending on the context.
Especially for things like typing what is wrong with the 3 joints per finger times 9 other fingertips per joint for 10x9 inputs letters/numbers? That is an idea fro the 90s.
What's wrong is that it's not natural. The whole point of VR, and to a lesser extent AR, is to convince you that the fiction being presented to you is real. I.e. An immersive environment that could be mistaken for the physical world. That means that you should be able
Seems like BS #2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Above me, Samantha posted "Seems like BS", and I have to strongly concur. There are no links to any credible or technical sources or reports. This seems like marketing or investor hype, or all too happy to have media coverage under the pretense that "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit". Here is why:
- There is a difference between reading afferent motor nerve electrical activity to infer intent, such as to control a prosthesis in an amputee, versus reading mechanical activities or geometries to see what in hand-and-wrist has actually moved so that this can be translated to a robotic or remote control device. Both are worthy goals, but different parts of these reports confuse and conflate the two. The reports do not really know what they want to say.
- The video of the real hand on left with white 3d rendering on right is meant to imply (baffle with bs) that the render was generated on the fly by the technology reading the real hand position, but that looks like BS. The rendered view most likely was mapped from the real hand video, but post-facto. The colorful buzz lines streaming out of the wrist are super neato gee whiz golly, but they don't mean shit. The render was not created from an electrical data stream from the device.
- There is another video of the device on a dude with missing fingers. Back to that in a moment. Note that the dude with the congenital hand anomaly is wearing the device in the proximal forearm, whereas the white hand avatar is wearing it at the wrist. The distinction is crucial. The proximal forearm is where the extrinsic muscles are, and all three major nerves are there (median, ulnar, radial). In the distal forearm, median and ulnar n.'s pass through to the hand, but muscle bulk is scant, and the radial nerve (controls extension) is gone at that level, so if they claim they are reading muscle electrical activity, no they are not in the wrist shot. If they claim to be reading nerve, okay, but the hand movement shows a mix of all elements - median and ulnar extrinsics, median and ulnar intrinsics (in the hand per se), and radial which is for the extrinsic extensors with no motor activity in the hand per se. There is no way to sense all of that at the wrist level.
- The congenital hand dude looks like he most likely had congenital or amniotic constriction bands, maybe with some syndactyly. In this disorder, scar bands amputate digits in utero, but the neuro-muscular axis forms properly, so the dangly part of the fingers may be missing, but various joints and bones are there, and integrated neuro-muscular motion of remaining parts is normal, just as he demonstrates in the video. He has more than enough parts, thumb and small finger, to have a grasp and pinch, so to claim he never held anything in that hand except to see it in video with the gizmo on - that sounds like the ultimate scripted BS (versus he had the worst medical care ever, but I know of nowhere where care is quite that bad yet).
- One claim is that the device operates in two modes - reading signals or passing signals. If they are reading EMG signals, that is plausible, but would have to be done at proximal forearm, as discussed above, not wrist. If they are passing current, that too is plausible, in a form of low res electrical impedance tomography. That would work at wrist. As the hand moves, precise position of each tendon and muscle and bit of synovium would have a distinctive cross sectional anatomy for any given posture of the fingers, and each detailed cross-section anatomy versus finger position would also have a different impedance map at that level (muscles are highly conductive, tendons are excellent insulators, and synovium has mid level resistance). So, I would buy into the idea they are doing something like that.
- But, the patent filing diagram they show - WTF? A fifth grader could have conceived that. Wear a wrist bad with electrodes with some promise that we will read an electrical signal. What the hell happened to the paten
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There's lots of research on using UMG to monitor finger movements. Plenty of actual setups demonstrating it.
The thing is, most of the muscles that move your fingers in ways you'd want to capture are located near your elbow. So the "wristband" is more like the elbow bands tennis players wear. Then, to get the other movements, you need something on the back of the hand, like a glove.
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EMG, not UMG.
I'm Holding my Breath Here (Score:2)
Trade name will be (Score:2)
Pick your nose.. (Score:1)