A professor at the University of Chicago believes he is on his way to creating a wearable for market that will manipulate your muscles with electrical impulses to cause you to move involuntarily so you can perform a physical task you otherwise didn’t know how to do, like playing a musical instrument or operating machinery.
Dr. Pedro Lopes, who heads the Human Computer Integration lab at the university, is all about integrating humans and computers, closing the gap between human and machine. His team, which focuses on engineering the next generation of wearable and haptic devices, is exploring the endless possibilities if wearables could intentionally share parts of our body for input and output, allowing computers to be more directly interwoven in our bodily senses and actuators.
Lopes’ vision: a wearable EMS device that would look like a sleeve and be able to send electrical impulses in the right timing and in the right fashion to make a user’s muscles move involuntarily to perform a physical task. EMS stands for electrical muscle stimulation.
Think training people to operate tools they are not familiar with, he said, or speeding up a user’s reaction time to train someone to have better reflexes. According to Dr. Lopes, by speeding up a user’s muscle stimulation, they could, for instance, have superhuman reflexes and be so fast that they could take a picture of a flying baseball. The technology can also teach people to play musical instruments, use tools and operate machinery, for example.
“The wearables you buy today are pretty much all only a reduced smartphone. You shrink the smartphone display, put it on a wristwatch, and you have it,” said Lopes at the CNBC Evolve Summit in Chicago on Tuesday. “But what if we take that to the next step. What if these devices can not only read signals from the human body but also intersect and interject signals into the human body?”
He added that “if a wearable is able to move our muscles, we’ve just unlocked a very different way to learn a physical skill. Instead of learning a skill by reading a book about it or seeing a YouTube video about how to do this carpentry movement or how to juggle or play a musical instrument, in the future we may be learning how to do it by having a wearable device control our muscles.”
Tracking day-to-day activities using wearables has become a way of life. Roughly 60 million Americans will use a wearable device at least once a month in 2019, from fitness trackers and smart watches to hearables, smart clothing and now even smart glasses.
As the technology gets smarter, the wearables are getting edgier, as designers continuously looking for new ways to integrate the technology into all kinds of clothing and accessories. Among them: a smart tattoo dubbed DuoSkin, which is a collaboration between MIT’s Media Lab and Microsoft Research. The skin interface is made of gold metal leaf and enables users to control their mobile devices, display information and store information on their skin while serving as a statement of personal style. Google and Levi’s partnered to come out with a jean jacket with touchscreen functionality. The Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket with Jacquard has microthin conductive threads sewn into the left sleeve of the jacket, which senses your touch and links to your mobile device via Bluetooth.
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这项新的可穿戴技术正在弥合人类与机器人之间的鸿沟(CNBC)
芝加哥大学的一位教授表示，他正在为市场创作一个可穿戴设备，该设备将通过电脉冲来控制你的肌肉，
使你不由自主地运动，从而执行你本来不知道该如何做的身体任务，例如弹奏乐器或操作机器。
芝加哥大学人机集成实验室的负责人Pedro Lopes 博士致力于将人与计算机集成在一起，缩小人与机器之
间的鸿沟。他的团队致力于研究下一代可穿戴和触觉设备，他正在探索无穷无尽的可能性，如果可穿戴设
备可以有意共享我们身体的一部分进行输入和输出，计算机可以更直接地交织到我们的身体感觉和执行器
中。
Lopes 的展望：一种可穿戴的 EMS 设备，看起来像一个袖子，能够在正确的时间以正确的方式发送电脉
冲，以使用户的肌肉非自愿地运动以执行身体任务。 EMS 代表电激肌肉。
他说，可以考虑培训人们使用他们不熟悉的工具，或者加快用户的反应时间来锻炼某人具有更好的反应能
力。根据 Lopes 博士的说法，例如，通过加快用户的肌肉刺激速度，他们可能会产生超人的反射，并且反
应速度如此之快，以至于可以拍摄飞行棒球的照片。例如，该技术还可以教人们弹奏乐器，使用工具和操
作机械。
“你今天购买的可穿戴设备几乎全都只是智能手机。你缩小智能手机的显示屏，放在手表上，就可以了。”
Lopes 在周二于芝加哥举行的 CNBC Evolve Summit 上说。 “但是，如果我们将其带到下一阶段呢？如
果这些设备不仅可以读取人体信号，还可以将信号相交并将其输入人体，该怎么办？”
他补充说：“如果可穿戴设备能够移动我们的肌肉，那么我们将以一种非常不同的方式来学习体育技能。
将来，我们可能不是通过阅读一本有关该书的技巧或观看有关如何进行木工运动或如何演奏乐器的
YouTube视频来学习技能，而是可能通过配备可穿戴设备控制我们的肌肉来学习这些技能。
使用可穿戴设备跟踪日常活动已成为一种生活方式。从健身追踪器和智能手表到听觉设备，智能服装甚至
现在的智能眼镜，2019 年大约每月有 6,000 万美国人至少会使用一次可穿戴设备。
随着技术变得越来越智能，可穿戴设备也变得越来越先进，因为设计师们不断寻找将技术集成到各种服装
和配饰中的新方法。其中包括：一种名为DuoSkin 的智能纹身，它是麻省理工学院媒体实验室和微软研究
院之间的合作。皮肤界面由金色金属叶制成，使用户可以控制自己的移动设备，在皮肤上显示信息和存储
信息，同时还可以表达个人风格。 Google 和 Levi 的合作推出了具有触摸屏功能的牛仔夹克。Levi 的提
花通勤卡车夹克有细细的导电线缝在夹克的左袖中，可以感应你的触摸并通过蓝牙链接到你的移动设备。
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