Neural Wristband from Facebook: The Future of Augmented Reality?


Neural Wristband from Facebook: The Future of Augmented Reality?

It’s been long since Facebook - the social media behemoth has got its hand into virtual and augmented reality. The company bought a powerful VR company like Oculus, and also formed its own Facebook Reality Labs (FRL). However, no new viable consumer device for augmented reality (AR) has hit the market as of yet from Facebook.


So, what the engineers and researchers are cooking in the Facebook Reality Labs? They are certainly not sitting around doing nothing! So, let’s dig a little deeper and find out how the researchers at Facebook are trying to shape the future of the augmented reality from below.


Neural Wristband


You may have heard somewhere that when a person wants to do something like lifting a finger, the brain sends a signal to the specific part of the body to get it done. Then, what if an AR device could detect that signal as soon as it is transmitted from the brain? The scientists at FRL are exploring that in many ways.


They are now testing out a Neural Wristband that can capture those signals with numerous sensors, and then translate them for other devices. Although it is at its very early stage, the possibility of getting things done without even having to lift your finger certainly sounds like an amazing thing, doesn’t it?


AR Glasses


While VR glasses get you out of your reality and take you into the virtual world, augmented reality or AR glasses in development by Facebook are trying to create different layers of reality in the real world. It can be hugely beneficial for business meetings, medical surgeries, direction projections, and so on. These glasses are also going to be able to read the signals translated by the Neural Wristband.


Into the Future of Augmented Reality


Despite such progress in the development of augmented reality, it is still early days for Facebook devices to be used in real life. Once developed fully, however, the devices would perhaps be able to sense intentions and motifs and work accordingly, without even needing to give it a signal. Let’s just hope and wait for that to become a reality.