Wristband lets you control computer with hand gesture

When you write your name in the air using Meta’s new device, you can see the letters appear on your smartphone, writes Cade Met from San Francisco

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The prototype looks like a giant rectangular wristwatch. But it doesn’t tell the time: It lets you control a computer from across the room simply by moving your hand.

With a gentle turn of the wrist, you can push a cursor across your laptop screen. If you tap your thumb against your forefinger, you can open an app on your desktop computer. And when you write your name in the air, as if you were holding a pencil, the letters will appear on your smartphone.

Designed by researchers at Meta, the tech giant that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, this experimental technology reads the electrical signals that pulse through your muscles when you move your fingers. These signals, generated by commands sent from your brain, can reveal what you are about to do even before you do it, as the company detailed in a research paper published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

With a little practice, you can even move your laptop cursor simply by producing the right thought. “You don’t have to actually move,” Thomas Reardon, the Meta vice president of research who leads the project, said in an interview. “You just have to intend the move.”

Meta’s wristband is part of a sweeping effort to develop technologies that let wearers control their personal devices without touching them. The aim is to provide simpler, quicker and less awkward ways of interacting with everything from laptops to smartphones — and maybe even to develop new digital devices that replace what we all use today.

Most of these technologies are years away from widespread use. They typically involve tiny devices surgically implanted in the body, which is a complicated and risky endeavour. These implants are tested solely with disabled people who cannot move their arms and hands, and need new ways of using computers or smartphones.