Shared Gesture-based Awareness and Command

Thalmic is developing a next generation armband for gesture detection that is full of motion and muscle sensors and can pickup on the “electrical activity in your muscles to wirelessly control” things via Bluetooth and applications like Blueforce Tactical. Blueforce sees great potential for this next generation of non-spoken command and control. While the applications for controlling other devices are endless, we think the opportunity for “shared” gesture detection amongst those in the national security and first responder space may have the potential to further impact the need for radios for some voice communications.

• Implications for Tactical Command: Imagine being able to issue non-spoken commands based on gestures that are synced amongst the team using arm motion normalized by Blueforce Tactical and shared in real-time to heads-up display interfaces.
• Implications for Conflict Detection: Given the work already done around impact detection using first generation accelerometers and gyroscopes, algorithms could be quickly constructed that detect and signal defensive and offensive body motion adding a layer to tactical situational awareness.
• Implications for Application Control: Who needs a mouse or touch-screen to interact with applications? Body gestures could be used to interact with tactical applications and negate the need to manually interact with other body worn sensor suites.

Even though Thalmic’s first generation band looks like something a Klingon might wear, one can quickly imagine this technology sewn into a combat shirt or bunker gear eliminating the need for yet another device.