14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers at Engineered Fibre Structures (EFS), a University of Manchester subsidiary, have almost completed the development of a soft-fabric electronic glove that remotely controls PC-related devices via a Bluetooth connection.
Now, imagine what you could actually do with this cool glove. Just snap your finger towards the desired device and suddenly your iPod plays music, the PC switches off in no time and those wireless speakers pump up the volume. Or even better! Forget about that Wiimote and interact more naturally with your console.
The glove is made of standard acrylic or stretch-nylon base yarn and it can be manufactured on a conventional industrial knitting machine. The wearable controller looks and feels like a normal glove, reminding us of some spiffy virtual reality older models. However, this glove has conductive pathways knitted into the material. The fingers are tipped with contactors, so if you put your thumb together with any other finger, you create an electric circuit that activates anything that is designed to receive appropriate signals.
Just recently, EFS managed to file a patent for their glove, and the company's engineers believe its current design is best suited for gaming. Billy Hunter, the lead commercial director for the product, said this sort of application would be a commercial success judging by current trends which emphasize greater freedom control patterns. Engineers involved in this project are content with the current configuration of the glove, but for certain applications they might need to do some further tweaking. "The textile part of the glove is more or less done," said Hunter. "If necessary, we can change the configuration fairly easily. What we need to do now is to miniaturise the electronics in the Bluetooth."
Control Glove could be easily used used in patient rehabilitation in healthcare, as a controller in video games, as a simplified and efficient computer interface, not to mention the communications device option for industrial, security and military applications. As far as PCs are concerned, the Control Glove allows users to navigate trough various documents, pictures and movies with the aid of their fingertip movements, while MMORPG experiences could greatly benefit from the extended interaction features.