Background

There are several systems that offer parts of what our system accomplishes. There is software that can listen to the notes being played by a musician. The software will then score the musician for a pre-selected song. This requires the musician to have their instrument and the book of music [1]. It also requires a quiet area and people who don’t mind hearing the musician practice. Our system does generate sounds but will still grade the user even if the sound of the speakers is turned down low. There are also gloves that have been developed by Manus VR to track finger position but they’re very expensive and would still need to be programmed to play notes [2]. We took both of these concepts and combined them into one low cost and portable solution.

Patents, Copy Rights, and Trademarks

There is no system on the market that has the same capabilities as our system. There are systems that have similar components but none of them combine those components together like our system does. Below, for example, is a patent that is similar to the glove component of our project.

• US 6128004 A : Virtual reality glove system with fabric conductors
  • Similar concept to our gloves but we use a different type of sensors to get finger positions. These gloves are also designed to interface with a PC
• US 7378585 B2 : Musical teaching device and method using gloves and a virtual keyboard
  • This patent plays piano notes depending on finger position which is similar to our design. It does not however, display a song to be played or give the user a score.

References

[1] http://www.pyware.com/ipas/

[2] https://manus-vr.com/