Imagine if you took one of the coolest aspects of the Apple Vision Pro — the Minority Report-style gestures — and paid $199 for the fun instead of $3,500. That’s the idea behind the Mudra Link from Wearable Devices, which reads your brain signals and essentially turns your hand into a remote control.
The Mudra Link is dubbed as the first neural wristband that works with Android, macOS and Windows devices, and I got a chance to try it out at CES 2025 ahead of its release at the end of January.
How does the Mudra Link work? Proprietary Surface Nerve Conductance sensors pick up electromyography signals from subtle finger movements, translating them into commands. There’s also an accelerometer and gyroscope on board.
I did a bunch of demos with the Mudra Link, and most of them worked smoothly. There was a large display in front of me as a Wearable Devices rep cycled through a range of apps on a Mac.
In the first demo I could pull a face like a rubber band in multiple directions by simply putting my hand in the air and doing a pinch gesture as I moved my arm subtly.
From there, I played a virtual violin (which was a bit finicky to get right). But my favorite demo was a round of Fruit Nina. I was able to slice through multiple fruits at once without a problem.
So it’s pretty cool to turn your hand into a mouse, but what’s the point? The next wave of wearable devices — smart glasses — will need a better method of control. And that’s exactly what Meta is doing with its Meta Orion concept. The company is making its own electromyography (EMG) wirstband, which senses the electrical signals of your muscle movements, beaming gestures to the glasses.
The idea behind wristbands like this is that you can keep your hand at your side, making subtle gestures to control the glasses instead of having to constantly touch the glasses themselves. So it’s no surprise that Wearable Devices is partnering with TCL so that its wristband will function as a remote for its smart glasses.
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Still, $199 is not cheap for an accessory to smart glasses, so it will be key for TCL and other smart glasses partners to offer a bundle at a cheaper price.
