Virtual Air Guitar

Play guitar in the air: sensor gloves turn finger movements into music. Silver medal, APOGEE 2010.

• Virtual Air Guitar - A guitar made of gloves

  (2010, BITS Pilani)

  Move your fingers in the air and hear the guitar you're pretending to play.

  A self-initiated system-on-a-chip prototype: sensor gloves and a small circuit drive electro-acoustic transducers, so the same finger movements you'd make on a real guitar produce its sound.

  • Light sensors on the left-hand fingers choose the notes and chords; the right-hand fingers choose the string
  • A wheel-and-pulley between the hands measures their distance to pick the fret, just like sliding along a real neck
  • An accelerometer on the strumming hand maps the strum to the loudness, and its speed to the pitch
  • Silver medal at APOGEE 2010, the annual international technical festival of BITS Pilani
  • The same idea carries over to any instrument you could play in the air