Facebook is in the final stages of acquiring a startup in new York called CTRL Labs, which has developed a bandage that monitors the user’s fingers, reading the electrical signals within his hands. It would be interesting to see if in the future some vr club in Moscow or vr club SPb was able to apply the technology in practice.
It works by detecting the electrical signals passing through the wrist of the user to the fingers. Based on how the signal passing through the tendons and muscles in the hand, it is possible to determine their position. Machine learning is used to convert these changes in posture of the fingers.
The technology is very similar to what is described in the patent application filed by Facebook in February. It is possible that the CTRL Labs were able to solve problems that were not resolved in the team Facebook, or that Facebook wanted to combine their efforts. It is also possible that the startup has the intellectual property, which will need Facebook for commercialization of this technology (more likely).
The possibility of direct use of each of the fingers adds a whole new level of interactivity in virtual reality. Today, however, this feature is missing in almost all consumer virtual headsets. Company Leap Motion has delivered a set to track the fingers for Oculus DK2 in 2014 (this technology is used by some clubs vr), but the quality of the track left much to be desired.
Facebook reports that the deal has not closed, but they are working with the regulators for approval and hope that the deal can be closed in the near future. After this command is CTRL Labs will be integrated into Facebook Reality Labs, the largest known in the world, a research unit of the virtual reality.
“They will join our team Facebook Reality Labs, where we hope to create such a technology to scale and faster to implement it in consumer goods, “wrote Andrew Bosworth, Vice-President of Facebook in the AR/VR in your post in Facebook.
If this technology really works, it can bring finger tracking for VR and / or AR without having to perform energy-intensive processing on several cameras aimed at your fingers. In addition, since it does not depend on cameras, tracking will work at all angles regardless of the orientation of the headset.
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