Inquisition - Would the glove actually move or would it somehow use electric stimuli in order to force your hand into moving ?

Also, would the video be used in correlation with the glove? For example as the video is playing the glove is moving your hands in the same movement/synchronization ?

isnt this been around or at least in the ab based on my recollection on some discovery channel feature?

GroundLoad, the glove would do either or both depending upon the desired skill. Some skills require more complex conditioning. And, yes, the video would be tied directly to the glove to provide the full sense of your brain operating accordingly. The primary goal is to program into your brain the required electrical impulses as well as a mirrored mental projection. Much like the old saying goes: mind over matter.

Literate_saint, so far there is a proven (FDA approved) method of muscular strengthening through electric stimuli, commonly used thus far for abdominal purposes. A similar form of this technology would be used in a more controlled environment to train your muscles and synchronize these instructions with your brain.

sounds pretty high tech.. how do you plan to build this glove?

The engineering of this device is trivial. As stated before, there is already technology existing that stimulates muscles through electronic impulses. All that is needed, as far as additional R&D, is to record professionals performing the task of choice. The data can then be used to preprogram a small circuit board with the built-in instructions and then use these instructions in a reversed process to distribute the signals to the glove. If the electronic stimuli is found to be too costly (although, in the long run it would reap the rewards) then the glove could be more bulky and simply contain a miniturized motor/pulley system that could physically make the glove move. I will make a diagram shortly to clarify any design questions.

If it works it's great.
I do recall from playing guitar and piano that it's not only about the exercise alone, but for certain cords you need a lot of aglity. I wouldn't want the glove to let my hands do something I'm not able to.
Tommy

Can you accurately stimulate all the little muscles in the hand without some invasive electrodes? This is not rhetorical criticism; I don't know the answer and I'm curious about the state of the art.

I think a force-feedback glove that guided your hand through external manipulation would be much simpler technologically and might provide better teaching. Just like a good teacher will guide your hand through doing something (learning to write, whatever), a force feedback glove could guide your hand through a task with the goal being that you eventually moved ahead of the glove, never feeling it because you were already moving where it was trying to push you.

I think a full-body suit that did this would be a great teaching tool for athletics. When you teach someone to properly hit a baseball, golfball, or strike a soccer ball, you can show them the proper position of the body at each stage but you can't guide them through the real full-speed motion very easily. Any athlete has had that "aha" moment when they finally did something the correct way and felt for the first time how smooth and easy it was to do it right. A force feedback suit that let you feel where your body should be for a proper move might be a great training aid to help get to those aha moments.

Connect me, put it on and let me play :-)

Like the scene in the Matrix where Neo learns Ju-Jitsu and Kempo etc

I was thinking of the Matrix too...

As a musician, I'd be very interested in such a system - if it works. Certainly I spent quite a lot of time simply fingering through difficult passages without playing a note, just to get it 'under my fingers'. If, as micco points out, the technology is good enough to allow what are really quite dexterous movements to be reproduced, it might be a very interesting experiment.

..i like this!

4 stars.

It's an interesting idea. It sounds expensive and time consuming. It's not a viable idea for me.

You may find difficulty having the glove force the hand to move. One alternative would be to create a recording mechanism for hand and finger movements (perhaps through a glove). The the movement could be stored away for future use.

The person learning the movement would have to mimic what a hand on the screen was doing (which would be a replica of the recorded movements). If you are familiar with video games think something like Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) and the many Wii games that revolve around mini games.

Then the learning mechanism is matching the on screen hand, which will make the glove a lot simpler and more importantly cheaper.

“Can you accurately stimulate all the little muscles in the hand without some invasive electrodes?”
No, many intrinsic muscles of the hand are too small and deep to stimulate from the surface.

“If the electronic stimuli is found to be too costly (although, in the long run it would reap the rewards) then the glove could be more bulky and simply contain a miniaturized motor/pulley system that could physically make the glove move.”

In this example, resistance is provided.
Simulating a grasping force; description and vids
http://www.caip.rutg...ouzit/lrp/glove.html

Assisting stroke victims; then, weaning them off the robot
http://www.Handmentor.com

Data gloves usually sample hand motion to drive a computer sim (opposite of driving the hands)

“A data glove is an interactive device, resembling a glove worn on the hand, which facilitates tactile sensing and fine-motion control in robotics and virtual reality. Data gloves are one of several types of electromechanical devices used in haptics applications.“

Data Glove
“”A glove equipped with sensors that sense the movements of the hand and interfaces those movements with a computer. Data gloves are commonly used in virtual reality environments where the user sees an image of the data glove and can manipulate the movements of the virtual environment using the glove.”

Gloves for kinematic measurement and driving vr
http://www.vrealities.com/glove.html

A garage data glove
http://www.geocities...ott124/DataGlove.htm

Because the glove will not have the precision of a person, you will need meaningful “biofeedback”. The music is already one excellent form of this. Musicians can sometimes dissociate the movement requirements and perform based on the sound they are producing. Good typists, type whole words and phrases while reducing attention to the details of the individual movements. Biofeedback must start more simply than the "expert states" in these examples. Maybe some surface electro-muscular stimulation patterns based on what the person is doing (bio-feedback loops) can work here.

“The engineering of this device is trivial.”
Maybe, but the bioengineering feat will be a big deal. You are dreaming big, so congratulations on that count. If it works, I want to channel Stevie Ray Vaughn.

I like it. A related field that you might want to investigate is haptics.

No machine can simulate this accurately. This is going to be to complex and no real tests prove that this could even work as far as improving your skills.

"No machine can simulate this accurately. This is going to be too complex and no real tests prove that this could even work as far as improving your skills."
Agreed.

Biofeedback is inaccurate, but the brain can learn to use it as an effective guide. I believe one's skills could be improved. Then the feedback could be removed, and the brain could attend to the signals comming from the movements. Maybe the sequence could get one over some technical hurdles.

Kevin_Cox: do you really think this is insurmountable? I agree that V1.0 probably couldn't teach your fingers to play a concerto, but I think there is some basis for moving in that direction.

Force-feedback control systems have been in use for a long time. I've seen some on robot controllers that provided resistance in a joystick to indicate resistance to motion experienced by the robot. This provided instant feedback when you bumped a wall or drove up a grade. When operators trained on the same task repeatedly (e.g. negotiating a maze) the feedback helped them develop their sense of control so they avoided the walls. I think learning to avoid the feedback would operate in the same way if you were learning to do anything manual.

There may be no real tests (yet) to prove this is effective in whiz-bang high-tech force-feedback systems, but every coach in every sport I've seen has used essentially the same technique for hundreds of years. Every golf and tennis coach at some point stands behind a player and guides them through a swing, trying to force them into the right position to feel the right technique. Every football and soccer coach has done the same thing positioning a player foot or hand on the ball (albeit in slow motion since they can't keep up with a full-speed technique the way the system described could). I can't think of a single manual thing I've ever taught or learned, from a child drawing their alphabet to learning to drive, to operating power tools, where the teacher didn't guide the hand of the student at some point. For most things I'd rather have a real teacher doing that, but I can see some uses for a system like this that would be duplicatable and repeatable.

I think DrV's challenge is not that this idea is so far out but that it is so close and useful that there is already a great deal of competition. While I haven't seen the specific training application he describes, advances in force-feedback for things like remote surgery are incredibly advanced and ongoing.

It's also not the kind of development that lends itself to crowdsourcing unless DrV happens across a CH member with particular expertise in this field.

"Every golf and tennis coach at some point stands behind a player and guides them through a swing, trying to force them into the right position to feel the right technique. Every football and soccer coach has done the same thing positioning a player foot or hand on the ball (albeit in slow motion since they can't keep up with a full-speed technique the way the system described could)."

Consider divers and gymnasts. The coaches do use some "hands on" tools, but the result is much more limited. In the end, the performer has to do and feel the movements on their own. With music, the "hands on" application is probably limited to instructing chords. After that, when it gets more dynamic,, the performer has to do it alone again.

In addition to force feedback, don't forget electrical stimulation and other forms of feedback.

For a different crowdsourcing model, think of robotics and coding teams, as there is usually a team behind successful robotic implementations.

Summertime: You're right that coaches in sports like diving and gymnastics use less hands-on guidance, but that's because the speed and position precludes it. A gymnastics coach will often move a student slowly through a move, but cannot do the same thing at speed without risking injury. This is a situation where a suit that could move with the student but still provide some "prodding" in the right direction would be most beneficial.

In music, guitar instructors frequently manipulate a students hand into the proper chord position but again, they can't do this at speed during an actual performance practice.

First of all, I thank all whom have contributed positive feedback. Special thanks to Summertime for the additional links and informative guidance. For all those that have provided feedback simply because they are frustrated with the fact that this device cannot be built in the near future, or they simply cannot see the vision and felt compelled to dwindle its liberation, well...when it comes out don't buy one and stop detrementing the creative process with negativity.

Now to answer questions and concerns.

The ultimate reasoning for the electronic stimuli is to "build" muscles that the user doesn't have, of which are required to perform the task of their choice. There are obviously far too many muscles and nerve endings contained in our hands to properly execute this technique. The goal is to provide the user with an "enhanced sense experience" to aid them learn their own body.

More to come...have to head out...

"...reasoning for the electronic stimuli is to "build" muscles that the user doesn't have, of which are required to perform the task of their choice."

Electro-stim to strengthen muscles and increase their size is usually done with a strong current. Electro-stim to guide muscle activity (biofeedback) need not drive a strong contraction from the external source. You might use both, and you might try them simultaneously, but be aware of the different processes.

Consider the specific effects of the strategies you choose. Muscle power and agility are both important. Ideally you could drive the hands to perform the exact task and train the requisite power and agility, but I think you might need to use some "workarounds" and break the task into parts initially.

DrV,

I have an idea you might try for facilitating piano skills:

You could put thin electrodes on the finger tips and stimulate them in the sequence and rhythm that they should strike the piano keys for a given piece of music. This ignores the spatial requirements to strike specific keys, so for this first step, it is probably best to use musicians who can already “almost” play the piece. Maybe the finger sequence and rhythm can accelerate this stage of learning to play the piece. You could also play the audio track in synchrony with the stimulation to enhance the foreign signal with more familiar feedback. Still further, you could synchronize a video of an expert musician playing the piece.

This of course is R&D, but the original idea seems to require a fair bit of trial and error to develop what you want. The idea could be counterproductive: If the stimulus causes a withdraw-reflex, you may have to put the stimulus on the top of the fingers. And/or, the keys could be set up with switches to short a circuit and deliver the stimulus when keys are missed during play. This strategy is to coax the movement rather than drive it absolutely. What do you think?

Rutgers Master II

The Rutgers Master II-ND glove is a haptic interface designed for dextrous interactions with virtual environments. The glove provides force feedback up to 16 N each to the thumb, index, middle, and ring fingertips. It uses custom pneumatic actuators arranged in a direct-drive configuration in the palm.

Cyberglove

The CyberGlove® is a fully instrumented glove that provides up to 22 high-accuracy joint-angle measurements. It uses proprietary resistive bend-sensing technology to accurately transform hand and finger motions into real-time digital joint-angle data.
http://www.immersion.com