Imagine lifting up your arms in the position of playing an electric guitar and, as you strum the imaginary strings, sound — music — blasts out of loudspeakers nearby.
Engineer Dr Richard Helmer and a team of researchers at CSIRO Textiles and Fibre Technology in Geelong has created a ‘wearable instrument shirt’ (WIS) which enables users to play an ‘air guitar’ simply by moving one arm to pick chords and the other to strum the imaginary instrument’s strings.
The WIS works by recognising and interpreting arm movements and relaying this wirelessly to a computer for audio generation. There are no trailing cables to get in the way or trip over.
Textile motion sensors embedded in the shirt sleeves detect motion when the arm bends – in most cases the left arm chooses a note and the right arm plays it.
References: CSIRO
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