Project LIMBO

limbo_hand

What is LIMBO?

LIMBO stands for Limbs IMotion BOthers, a tech demonstration of how to control other humans remotely, via digital interfaces.

The concept is simple: first, you need two people. We start with a guide–the person who wants to be in control–he or she can control by sending a signal from any digital interface imaginable: a software UI button, a sensor controller, a hand gesture to a computer, for example.  A special glove is worn by another person far away (this person, we call the dupe) that can be triggered to control muscle contractions.  So, it’s that simple, the guide controls the movements of the dupe, far away via digital interface.

What we’ve created is one specific scenario implementation of this concept.  Here’s how it works

LIMBO_Slide07

  1. Analyze the openness of the fist of the guide using the Creative Interactive Gesture Camera and computer vision techniques provided by Intel’s Perceptual Computing SDK, which gives us some information about the guide’s hand position and state.
  2. When we detect a palm from the guide, we can send some information to the dupe about the openness of the guide’s hand.
  3. The dupe is wearing a glove with electrically conducting pads.  Using principles of functional electrical stimulation (or FES) for short, we can send a current through the dupe’s arm to activate specific muscle contractions in the dupe‘s hand.
  4. What we’ve demonstrated is effectively the mapping of the grasp of one person’s hand, directly to another’s.

LIMBO_Slide08

Here’s a video of LIMBO in action

LIMBO Presentation PDF

 

Ermal Dreshaj and Sang-won Leigh