The sound and vision of BeBop Sensors
Inc.
“We are enabling the next generation of
musical instruments, as well as a whole host of other consumer and industrial
products with our smart fabric sensor technology.”
Point Roberts, WA
and Delta, BC - August 20, 2019 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Investorideas.com, a global news source and leading
investor resource covering multiple sectors including music and technology
issues an exclusive snapshot looking at BeBop Sensors Inc.
It doesn’t take
much to become impressed by Keith McMillen’s successes. With a Career that
has endured the better part of four decades McMillen has been the visionary and
creative force behind dozens of modern electronic musical innovations. But it
is his work that he is doing now with BeBop
Sensors Inc. that has opened the door to an expansive amount of
possibilities.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
It’s hard to
pinpoint when general interest turns into a tangible passion for something. It
is especially more fascinating when it develops in a person's formative years.
McMillen explained how his genuine curiosity turned into a lifelong
endeavour.
“My love of electronic music started
when I was in elementary school and got a copy of Switched on Bach. Having
heard most worldly sounds by that age, it was shocking – in a good way. After
that, I started hearing synths everywhere, until they really were everywhere. I
first built a guitar amplifier when I was ten because I couldn’t afford to buy
one. I have been designing musical instruments ever since.”
And indeed the
designing of musical instruments lead him to start his first company in 1979. Zeta Music designed and built modern
versions of electronic stringed instruments until it was sold to Gibson in
1992. Thereafter McMillen set his sights on a problem that many music playing
platforms hadn’t addressed - the inconsistent volume levels and audio quality
across music players. Octiv produced
the technology that found a way around the problem and has been used by
companies such as Itunes and was sold to Plantronics in 2005.
McMillen also
identified a problem that many touring musicians were having. Being a touring
musician himself he found it increasingly difficult to travel while managing a
large amount of oppressive gear.
“...I founded KMI (Keith McMillen
Instruments) to build hardware and software to enable compact electronic
musical instruments. We have now built dozens of products, some of which have
used millions of sensors worldwide, used by both professional as well as
up and coming musicians.”
The birth of BeBop.
The move towards
a more enlightened way in which musicians interact with their instruments began
with McMillen's earliest innovations such as the first programmable audio mixer
and router (AKAI MPX820 and MB76), Mirror 6 MIDI Guitar, SoftStep 3D foot
controller, K-Bow Bluetooth sensor bow, QuNeo 3D pad controller and the QuNexus
and K-Board keyboards, among many others. But it was with BeBop that allowed the ideas to evolve into
something beyond the original vision. McMillen first explained how BeBop had
been inspired by the need to adapt the way in which the human touch interacts
with stringent computer technology.
“In many of these above products, to
sense the touch and thereby initiate music, we needed sensors that had fast
response times, were light, thin, and cost effective. Such a product wasn’t
commercially available, so we created our own proprietary sensors using smart
fabrics. These fabric sensors had a market appeal on their own beyond musical
instruments and this gave birth to BeBop Sensors, a company I founded in 2014.
Bebop Sensors has been inventing, designing, engineering, and manufacturing smart
fabric sensor based products to connect squishy humans with rigid computers.”
With that simple
idea in mind the use for a technology that allows for the interaction of human
facilities alongside adaptive computer technology opens the door to an endless
amount of uses. The ability to add the human touch to the most advanced
technologies perhaps has yet to reveal it’s full potential.
“BeBop started by shipping sensors to a
variety of industrial, automotive, medical, and consumer applications. They
were mostly custom designs for OEMs. The applications ranged from hospital
beds,
wheel chairs, infant car seats,
automobile steering wheels, insoles in shoes, track pads, sports helmets,and
dozens of others. Among these, one application stood out – sensors in gloves,
used in Virtual Reality applications.”
In keeping with
the idea of the human touch McMillen explains the most exciting developments of
wearable sensor technology.
“In the VR environment, nothing quite
replaces the motion and flexibility of the human hand. We have created a
wireless data glove hand-tracking system to track fingers and fingertips and
send tactile
feedback via haptic actuators. The
sensors offer speeds of 1000Hz for fast response times and low latency. The
battery can be charged over a standard Micro USB cable and works all day. We
designed the Bebop Forte Data Gloves such that they are comfortable, with an
open palm construction to reduce sweating and a one-size-fits-all design that
is thin and light.”
The Future: BeBop and beyond.
“Our gloves are now used in VR training
applications by a variety of Fortune 500 customers. We have been shipping
everything we have made thus far and plan to release a mass production version
in the next few weeks.”
With all that in
mind, the original spark for the idea of a new progressive way of looking at
and interacting with musical instruments hasn’t died out. The technology has
grown beyond the use for the next generation of musicians but is still very
much alive in that realm. The natural progression of the technology is exciting
in itself and certainly keeps a keen observer wonder where it will go next.
McMillen's vision for the future has the same effect.
“We are enabling the next generation of
musical instruments, as well as a whole host of other consumer and industrial
products with our smart fabric sensor technology. We are building
state-of-the-art musical instruments with our sensor technology. These are
compact, electronic, and they are creating amazing music thanks to creative
artists in the field. I also want to have instruments networked so they can
influence the players, the score, and each other. Acoustic instruments
“network” by blending in the air. Electronic instruments can “blend” at the
network control level live on stage. Imagine what this will sound like. In the
future, we hope that our sensor technology embedded in the data gloves will
also enable musicians to become more skilled at their craft by providing them
with vital data, recommendations and solutions. Finally, I am surrounded by an
incredible team, most of them musicians themselves, with deep interest in
creating products that influence today's musicians to create tomorrow’s music.”
By Noel Campbell for Investorideas.com
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