[throw20102010]

The CTRL-kit, which is the "real" product they have, uses electromyography, which needs muscle activation to work, so something must twitch at a minimum to send a signal. A good interface may enable controlling multiple things at once, but they would all require muscle activity.

They may have other things in R&D. At least they are closer to having a real product than Neuralink and they started their presentation on time at Re:MARS.

[m463]

Neural interfaces

One of my biggest “Wow!” moments of 2018 took place in the offices of neural interface company CTRL-labs. Their demo involves someone playing the old Asteroids computer game without touching a keyboard, using machine learning to interpret the nerve signals that are sent to the hands. But it isn’t quite what you think. Moving things in the digital realm without moving your hands seems startling enough (though it’s worth remembering that it was once considered remarkable to be able to read silently without moving your lips). But that’s just the first stage. Essentially, users of this technology “grow” another virtual hand, which they can move independently of their physical hands. One of the researchers bowled me over when he said he was “working on controlling nine cursors at once.” Gradually, then suddenly, our children will interface with machines in deeper and deeper ways. Humanity is already going cyborg (see trend 1); expect it to accelerate. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that AI will replace humans when it can be used even more powerfully to augment them.

from https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/gradually-then-suddenly

[throw20102010]

In the asteriods demo (https://youtu.be/5Z5aZK2C3ew?t=711) the only reason his fingers aren't moving a bunch is because the hand is flat on the table and the table is pushing back. You can see his fingers twitch while he's playing.

This is the biggest overselling point from them. The only people that can grow a "virtual hand" are amputees. Everyone else simply has a shadow hand that follows what their real hand does (or would do if there wasn't a restraint). All of their control interfaces are coupled to what the shadow hand does- i.e., if the shadow hand's index finger curls in, the spaceship spins to the right in the game. In reality it's not a shadow hand they are sensing, but the neurons that control the movement in your hand/arm.

It's a fact of biology that if you are reading nerve impulses from the arm, then to control the computer something must be happening in your arm. Every motor neuron is connected to a muscle. The best we can get is a very sensitive system where your arm doesn't move very much. You cannot (without a million years of evolution) send signals to your arm without it moving. If you were to cut the neurons off from the muscle, you could then send activations without your arm moving. However, you would also lose physical movement ability, and nobody is doing that (except for amputees).