MYO - Wearable Gesture Control from Thalmic Labs

Gesture-control device racks up almost $4 million in pre-orders What if you could control your computer, phone, or your favorite tech gadget with a wave of your arm or a snap of your fingers? Watch MYO, the wearable gesture control device from Thalmic Labs, in action. The MYO armband, which uses proprietary muscle activity sensors to detect your hand and arm gestures, uses Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy to wirelessly communicate with the devices it is paired with. The Canada-based startup, which has just 15 employees, created waves at the Y Combinator Demo Day on Mar. 26. It has already racked up over $3.7 million in pre-orders from 129 countries. “MYO is a good commercial implementation of electromyography — a technology that’s already being used in robotics and kinesiology,” said Adib Ghubril, research director at Gartner. Stephen Lake, the 23-year-old chief executive and co-founder of Thalmic Labs, told us, “We’ve been approached by most of the big companies in the Valley,” without giving any names. Photo: Aaron Grant (left), Stephen Lake (right).

MIT makes transparent solar panels Transparent solar panels — think about it for a moment: Sheets of transparent glass or plastic film that also generate electricity. It’s almost the perfect solution for all our energy needs, generating free power from every available surface, window, and computer display. The concept of transparent solar panels isn’t new, of course, but it now looks like they’re finally finding their way to market: Ubiquitous Energy, a startup that was spun off from MIT last year, is developing a technology and patent portfolio and hopes to bring affordable transparent solar panels to market soon. At this point, you might be wondering how transparent solar cells actually work — after all, if it’s transparent, how can it absorb light energy? The trick, then, is creating a solar cell that only absorbs IR and UV radiation, while letting visible light pass straight through. This is Ubiquitous Energy’s transparent solar cell, in front of an LCD display showing the Tetons.

The magic of an augmented map Credit: Jessica Clarke JOB:Computer sciences student Location:Hobart, Tasmania Institution:University of Tasmania Augmented reality is a live view of a physical environment with elements that have a computer generated sensory input. The CSIRO are now taking the product to people who might be interested in exploring this augmented reality world themselves. When holding the device with the ‘Magic Map’ app over a map, you can view up to date weather phenomenon from the local sensor networks as a 3D map and data visualisation. “I am fascinated by human-computer interaction, and when designing new systems, I always consider the best way to make a system more user friendly and intuitive,” says Clarke. Clarke discovered first-hand how technology can become intuitive in people’s nature. “He is able to swipe through the apps and pick the app he wants.

I used Google Glass: the future, with monthly updates The frosted-glass doors on the 11th floor of Google’s NYC headquarters part and a woman steps forward to greet me. This is an otherwise normal specimen of humanity. Normal height, slender build; her eyes are bright, inquisitive. She leans in to shake my hand and at that moment I become acutely aware of the device she’s wearing in the place you would expect eyeglasses: a thin strip of aluminum and plastic with a strange, prismatic lens just below her brow. Google Glass. What was a total oddity a year ago, and little more than an experiment just 18 months ago is now starting to look like a real product. But as I release from that handshake and study the bizarre device resting on my greeter’s brow, my mind begins to fixate on a single question: who would want to wear this thing in public? Sticky TOC engaged! Finding Glass Finding Glass I was about to beta test Glass myself. "Why are we even working on Glass? Steve goes on. I get it. Google-level design Google-level design But seriously.

From fitness to wellness: OMsignal’s smart shirts measure your motion … and emotion Fitness is good, but wellness is better. And to become one with the universe, you must first become one with your T-shirt. Tracking bracelets like Fibit, Fuelband, and Up are for fitness, measuring steps, motion, and action. Arm straps like BodyMedia also measure heart rate, skin conductivity (how much you’re sweating), and exercise intensity. All of those are important to Montreal-based smart apparel startup OMsignal too, but the company says there’s more to wellness than fitness. “We think movement is awesome, we’ve worn all the devices,” says CEO Stephane Marceau. OMsignal is doing that, as you might have guessed, by making you one with the shirt. OMsignal’s T-shirts and bras have the basic tool that every other fitness solution employs: a 3-axis accelerometer to give you motion and steps and estimated calories. That’s not just heart rate, that’s an actual measurement of the electrical signature of your heart. Those insights have a lot to do with stress. But not just yours.

Next-Gen Video Format H.265 Is Approved, Paving The Way For High-Quality Video On Low-Bandwidth Networks The ITU has approved a new video format that could bring 4k video to future broadband networks, while also making streaming HD video available even on bandwidth-constrained mobile networks. The H.265 standard, also informally known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), is designed to provide high-quality streaming video, even on low-bandwidth networks. The new video format is the successor to the H.264 codec, which nearly every video publisher has standardized after the release of the iPad and several other connected devices. It seems crazy now, but once upon a time, Apple’s adoption of H.264 and insistence on HTML5-based video players was controversial — especially since most video before the iPad was encoded in VP6 to play through Adobe’s proprietary Flash player. The hope is that, through improved compression techniques, H.265 will enable publishers to stream 1080p video with about half as many bits as required today.

Internet of Things and Kickstarter. A perfect match? Internet of Things and Crowdfunding Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms are quickly becoming the first stop for Makers and hardware manufacturers to test their product concept on the market, cover bulk upfront supplier costs, and bring their connected products to life. Twine, the sensor block system developed by Supermechanical was the first web enabled product to be a breakout hit raising over half a million dollars in early January, and the Pebble watch blew through Kickstarter's old funding records by raising more than $10 million during its month-long campaign.Below we take a look at some of the successful (and a few not so successful) Internet of Things related projects that are driving this trend and where they currently stand in their development process. // Ongoing Campaigns Unsuccessful in their funding: Will these projects turn into viable companies? Can hardware costs be driven low enough to generate mass market adoption?

The first flexible, fiber-optic solar cell that can be woven into clothes An international team of engineers, physicists, and chemists have created the first fiber-optic solar cell. These fibers are thinner than human hair, flexible, and yet they produce electricity, just like a normal solar cell. The US military is already interested in weaving these threads into clothing, to provide a wearable power source for soldiers. In essence, the research team started with optical fibers made from glass — and then, using high-pressure chemical vapor deposition, injected n-, i-, and p-type silicon into the fiber, turning it into a solar cell. Functionally, these silicon-doped fiber-optic threads are identical to conventional solar cells, generating electricity from the photovoltaic effect. The lead researcher, John Badding of Penn State University, says the team has already produced “meters-long fiber,” and that their new technique could be used to create “bendable silicon solar-cell fibers of over 10 meters in length.”

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