Microsoft's EMG Controller Is the Perfect Guitar Hero Enabler

While the computer interface hasn't evolved very much in the last two or three decades, the last few years have seen a lot of huge leaps in technological progress. Mouse and keyboards have seen mostly only aesthetic modifications since their early days, just like gamepads and joysticks did, but a brand new generation of controllers is making its push in the industry. Nintendo's Wii and the Wii Remote were the first major application of motion sensing technology in gaming, a concept both Sony and Microsoft are eager to evolve.

While Project Natal tries to remove the idea of a handheld controller altogether, Microsoft is working on something that's even more interesting. In March 2009, it filed a patent application for a new technology that would use "wearable electromyography-based controllers for human-computer interface" and that could be "implemented as an armband, a wristwatch, eyeglasses, an article of clothing worn by the user (such as a shirt, gloves, shoes, pants, headband, etc.” Back in 2008, a similar patent was filed for an EMG device restricted to the forearm alone.

While this may sound very sci-fi and mysterious, in more common words, the device would use muscle input as a reading factor and interpret them as actions, allowing for a very different controller-less interaction with computers. And from what Microsoft has revealed, this technology is very close to being available on the market. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the video that Microsoft has posted on YouTube is worth a million pages from a science manual.

Under development by the University of Washington, the University of Toronto and Microsoft, the technology is already being put to use, and it's not in all the serious ways some might think. While the video does show people interacting with different electronic devices in an almost telepathic manner, the point of interest for us is the Guitar Hero II section of the video, where the protagonist uses the forearm EMG reader to rock out in the game via the very popular air guitar technique. While we've seen some very talented guitarists playing the instrument in very strange manners, we've yet to see one play the guitar without the guitar.

The actual video is posted below, so take a look for yourself and stare in awe.