A cozy band wrapped snugly around my wrist was easily the most fascinating reveal at Meta Connect. Called the Neural Band and bundled with the new Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, it adds gestures and motion sensing that makes the experience feel thoroughly futuristic -- and full of unanswered questions.
I chatted with Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth for some answers. Wearing the Display glasses himself, he discussed the special waveguides that make the lenses transparent, the potential of the neural band's electrodes and why higher-index prescription lenses for people like me still aren't available.
Watch this: We Talk The Future Of Meta's Ray-Ban Display and Neural Band With Meta 18:54
Neural band as TV remote, keyboard or adaptive accessory
Bosworth says the electromyography-based neural band tech could adapt to individual behaviors and potentially serve a wide range of accessibility functions. For now, the band only works with the Ray-Ban Display glasses, but Meta envisions it as a potential interface for other products, too.
One potential use is as a TV remote. "Once you start using it regularly, you put it on your wrist and you just start using it every day, it becomes infuriating that you're not using it for more things like picking up a TV remote," Bosworth says. "We think the opportunity for this to be a bigger input platform over time is really big."
We also talked about the possibilities for typing, something Meta's research groups have discussed in the past. Bosworth says two neural bands would be needed, but it's being explored. "A really fun thing happens when you have two of these, you could also do typing. That's not a guarantee. We can do typing with downward-facing cameras pretty effectively, but [they're] expensive," he adds.
Talking with Meta's Andrew Bosworth on Meta's campus, where I also got a little look at a transparent neural band design. Meta
I asked about accessibility as well: Could the band be used to help someone with a lower range of motor skills, or no hand at all? The answer? Not yet, but adaptive functions are planned for the band's next phase.
"This is trained primarily on a model of people for whom they're sending motor signals down at a high fidelity to the appendage that they're moving," says Bosworth. "I don't think we've done any of the work yet to understand how it would affect somebody who either had a limb and lost it, or never had one."
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