Feb 26 2013
Waterloo-based startup Thalmic Labs announces the launch of their revolutionary gesture control device, MYO, an armband worn on the forearm that senses electrical activity in the muscles, allowing users to interact with digital technologies using just their fingers and hands.
Thalmic Labs Co-Founder & CEO Stephen Lake shows off a prototype of MYO, the company's new wearable gesture control device, Friday, February 22, 2013, in Kitchener-Waterloo. (The Canadian Press Images PHOTO/Thalmic Labs Inc.)
MYO is an industry game-changer for many reasons. Unlike other gesture control devices, it doesn't require a camera to sense the user's movements, freeing them from the confines of a fixed space to maintain connection with the device being controlled. The device can connect wirelessly to computers, mobile devices, and other electronics over a Bluetooth Low Energy connection.
"As a company, we're interested in how we can use technology to enhance our abilities as humans - in short, giving us 'superpowers'." explains Stephen Lake, co-founder and CEO of Thalmic Labs on the motivation behind MYO. "We're excited to see how the MYO blurs the lines between us and digital technology."
MYO is available for pre-order at https://www.bynorth.com/ for $149.00. Along with the pre-sale of the device, Thalmic Labs is also launching the MYO API that will allow developers to utilize the device's sophisticated hardware to experiment, build, and eventually profit from the endless applications of MYO technology.
Thalmic Labs was founded in 2012 by three University of Waterloo Mechatronics Engineering graduates (Aaron Grant, Matthew Bailey, and Stephen Lake) and has since grown to 10 employees. As announced in January, the company is a part of Y Combinator's winter 2013 cohort and has raised funding totaling $1.1 million.