activity of muscles associated with speech. it is targeted for use in noisy environments, and may be helpful for people without vocal cords, with aphasia, with dysphonia, and more. emg has also been used as a control signal for computers and other devices. an interface device based on an emg switch can be used to control moving objects, such as mobile robots or an electric wheelchair. this may be helpful for individuals that cannot operate a joystick-controlled wheelchair. surface emg recordings may also be a suitable control signal for some interactive video games. in 1999 an emg program called echidna was used to enable a man with locked-in syndrome to send a message to a computer. that program, now called neuroswitch, developed by control bionics enables people with severe disabilities to communicate by text, email, sms, computer-generated voice and to control computer games and programs, and - through the internet - anybots telepresence robots. a joint project involving microsoft, the university of washington in seattle, and the university of toronto in canada has explored using muscle signals from hand gestures as an interface device. a patent based on this research was submitted on june 26, 2008. in 2016 a startup called emteq labs launched a virtual reality headset with embedded emg sensors for measuring facial expressions. in september 2019 facebook bought a startup called ctrl-labs that was working on emg