One of the areas I supported during my time at Meta’s Neural Interfaces team was academic collaborations. These presented novel challenges — finding ways to package and distribute software and data to academic partners that would be portable and easy to build off of, while also protecting data privacy and company IP.
This collaboration with my alma mater Carnegie Mellon, led by Professor Douglas Weber, used Meta’s wearable sEMG wristband to explore whether people with motor disabilities — including spinal cord injuries — could control computers and mixed reality systems using muscle signals alone. The key insight: participants with complete hand paralysis still retained forearm muscle control, even when too weak for physical movement. One participant, paralyzed since 2005, successfully controlled a computer cursor and gamepad buttons on day one of testing.
