Thalmic Labs Picks Winners In Its #ifihadMYO Contest

Thalmic Labs, Waterloo-based makers of the futuristic Myo armband, has selected five winners in its #ifihadMYO competition.

The online contest is a direct play on Google’s #ifihadglass raffle from last year, in which potential first candidates described what they would do with the technology if they could come up with a particularly imaginative use for it. (Toronto’s David Ciccarelli, of voices.com, scored his Google Glass that way.)

Thalmic’s Jedi-like armband, still available for pre-order for shipping later this year, has generated a massive amount of buzz for the company, who have recently moved out of Waterloo’s Communitech Hub into some downtown office space of their own.

The company is turning heads in the startup world, and was featured in a New York Times article from August 29th, entitled “Which Start-Up Could Be the Next Big Thing?”.

The armband can send signals to connected devices based on the electrical impulses in the wearer’s wrist and hand, allowing them to, for example, pause and play a video, control a remote vehicle, and of course use it to shoot things in video games.

It must have been tough to winnow down the entries to just five, and Thalmic Labs gamely adds a few of their favourite honourable mentions after announcing the winners, just to demonstrate the variety of uses people were able to dream up, including a giant size projection of a game of Tetris, and using it to take remote photography.

An entrant called “Brian C.” (obviously Prince writing under a pseudonym) has an idea to “be able to control a recording studio single handedly. Even from within the recording booth!”

By the way, I wasn’t sure if it would be possible (or ethical) to fulfil my boyhood dream of playing chess with human pieces using Myo, so I refrained from entering.

Here are the winners:

#ifihadMYO I would use it to control prosthetic arms, so people can move them as if they were their own arms – David S.

#ifihadMYO I would create paintings on large scale displays in public places #DOOH #Digital Art – Jennifer J.

#ifihadMYO I would create the ability to perfect certain muscle memory movements – Golf Swing, BBall Shot, etc. – Kevin H.

#ifihadMYO Music! Transform gestures into midi signals pumped into a synthesizer – totally redefining air guitar! – James B.

#ifihadMYO I would develop software to let surgeons manipulate CT and MRI volumes inside the operating room. – Richard A.