Microsoft develops LightGuide, an assistant to improve the dexterity of our hands

A Microsoft Research team, the Microsoft ideas laboratory, has developed a system that helps perfect the performance of a series of hand movements by projecting signals and images onto the user's hands as a guide.

Microsoft Research and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois have created LightGuide, a system that offers the user the possibility of performing exercises with their hands and responding in real time to the movements made by them. Basically, LightGuide uses a projector and a 3D camera suspended in a structure that is located just above the user (to have an image of your hands from a point in height) to project images onto the user's hands that serve to guide them in the movements to be made (raise your hand, move it to one side or the other, lower your hands, etc) and adapt the image to the movement in response (for the user to see if they are responding appropriately or not).

Although this prototype still needs to improve some aspects related to the precision of the movements, The Microsoft Research and University of Illinois team is quite satisfied with the results since they demonstrate the viability of the design and construction of assistance and guidance systems that project indications on the user themselves that can contribute to the improvement of movements and gestures made with the hands., For example, learn to play a musical instrument, dance dance or practice martial arts, where it is required to perform complex hand movements quickly and easily.

LightGuide will project a light symbol indicating how you should move your hand to correctly complete the task. The main problem for the research team was finding a set of symbols that were easy to understand in terms of which direction to follow., and 3D, in the hand or arm, to do the movement correctly.

For now, LightGuide is only capable of guiding and capturing the movement of a hand and, precisely, One of the challenges that its developers pose is to evolve the system so that it is capable of proposing movements, and monitor them, for both hands at the same time.

Although it is an experiment and a proof of concept, LightGuide could open the door to the development of systems that, even, could be applied to rehabilitation therapies.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaw9GpuVLQ[/youtube]