The application shows muscle activity as graphical trend and is capable of basic operations such as muscle balance calculations, muscle activity counters and min/max follow-up.

I think this is quite intriguing as it is but then I added possibility to map certain muscle activity level to Symbian commands (key press, key press sequences etc.). So, basically using muscle by contracting and relaxing I can execute certain commands for Symbian device. And these commands are sent to the foreground (active) application. In essence, the application monitors muscle activity in the background and sends commands to the active application based on muscle activity.

As a proof-of-concept, I configured muscle activity command sequence for the Nokia SnakeEx game controls. You know the Snake game, where you control snake in a maze trying to collect food and avoid crashing to the maze borders. Following picture shows the command sequence configured for this case.

All this means simply that when right bicep is contracted, snake turns clockwise and when left bicep is contracted, snake turns counter-clockwise.

However as you can see from above picture, it is not enough just to execute one command e.g. when turning clockwise but several depending on the current snake direction. Also when contracting both biceps at once, left softkey is executed. This allows you to initiate new game without touching the device.

This application actually works as a general muscle-controller for Symbian device. With a few adjustments, application could follow the active foreground application name and based on that change command set on-the-fly. So when you are in messaging application, you could e.g. use muscles to write messages with T9. And when some game is active, command set is related to that game. Also different muscle contract-relax sequences could be mapped to different actions as well as different muscle activity levels. As I see it, possibilities as enormous with this kind of “bio-control”. Even more, in this case only two-channels were utilised, but when adding more channels you could use more muscles and more controls.

I must say that when you have played the game for some time, you feel like you have been doing real workout.

[added later]

Please review the addition "Symbian device control using muscle activity - a case study part 2" to this case as well.