Zuckerberg: Neural Wristband For AR/VR Input Will Ship 'In the Next Few Years'

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that it's working on a finger tracking neural wristband that will be ready to ship 'in the next few years.' UploadVR reports: Appearing on the Morning Brew Daily talk show on Friday, Mark Zuckerberg said 'we're actually kind of close to having something here that we're going to have in a product in the next few years.' An entirely different approach to finger tracking is to sense the neural electrical signals passing through your wrist to your fingers from your brain, using a technique called electromyography (EMG). Theoretically this could have zero or even negative latency, perfect accuracy, work regardless of lighting conditions, and not be subject to occlusion. When discussing the technology in 2021 Reardon claimed that a recent breakthrough enabled decoding the activity of individual neurons for 'almost infinite control over machines.' Occlusion-free finger tracking of this quality and reliability could enable precise control of complex interfaces with incredibly subtle movements of your hand resting on your lap, making it an ideal input method for headsets and AR glasses.

So how will this arrive in a Meta product? In early 2023 an internal Meta AR/VR hardware roadmap leaked to The Verge, revealing details about Quest 3, the existence of the headset now rumored to be called Quest 3 Lite, and the cancelation of the 2024 candidate for Quest Pro 2 in favor of a more ambitious but 'way out' model. But this roadmap also mentioned that Meta was planning to release the neural wristband alongside the third generation Ray-Ban smartglasses in 2025 as the input method.

According to that roadmap, two models of the wristband will be offered at different price points - one with the neural input tech only and another that also has a display and camera to act as a smartwatch too. A second generation of the wristband will also apparently act as the input device for the true AR glasses Meta plans to launch in 2027. We should however note that this plan or the timeline may have changed in the year since.

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