PossessedHand teaches you to play an instrument, Evil Dead style
Learning an instrument can be difficultfor most people, it’s a time-consuming and frustrating endeavor. However, Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Japan has teamed up with the University of Tokyo to create something that will literally take control of your hand and teach you how to play a song.
The device is called PossessedHand, and it’s aptly named, since it appears that the users hand is possessed, a la Evil Dead style. The PossessedHand stimulates the muscles in your forearm by applying electrical stimuli to the muscles. Each muscle is stimulated with 28 electrode pads which flex the joints between the bones of each finger and also triggers wrist movement. The stimulation isn’t anything drastic. Emi Tamaki of the University of Tokyo told New Scientist that the stimulations are similar to a low-frequency massage stimulation that is commonly used.
The concept of stimulating people’s muscles with devices isn’t anything new. However, most are either invasive using electrodes embedded into the skin or glove-like. The latter would make it hard to play an instrument like the koto – a traditional Japanese stringed instrument which the team used to test the device. Tamaki and her team created instructions to send to the device on how and when to stimulate the player’s muscles to properly play the koto using all five fingers. During the tests, the team found that two beginner players made a total of four timing errors while using the PossessedHand, compared to 13 when playing the instrument without the device.
Though the concept of having electrodes prompt your arm to move without you having any say about it can be slightly terrifying, Tamaki says that people will just get used to it once they see how convenient the technology is. The stimulations aren’t strong enough to actually move the fingers and wrist but are just enough to notify the player that it’s time to move this finger, or it’s time to bend the wrist.
Besides being able to learn music, the PossessedHand could also help patients in rehabilitation to gain a wider range of movements. Physical therapists already use electrical muscle stimulation, but most of the existing devices can only help with basic movements.
It will be interesting to see if people will actually be able to learn how to play instruments with the PossessedHand. There’s always a possibility that they’ll only be able to play certain songs they’ve learned with the help of the device, but won’t actually hold any real knowledge on how to play the instrument itself.
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