October 29, 2009 – Students from Japan’s Kyoto University have created a system that mimics the wah-wah tones of the armchair rock star’s shredding weapon of choice: the air guitar.
The system — which uses sensors to create guitar sounds based on moving hands as if playing the instrument — took top honors at a domestic MEMS competition ahead of the IEEE-NEMS event in China in January, where it will compete against teams from the US, China, Germany, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, notes the Nikkei daily.
Two other teams from Japan are going as well — another Kyoto group that built a toy displaying different LED light patterns depending on its rotational speed, and a group from Shinshu U. with a device that lights up when sensing fluctuations in sounds and music, the paper notes.