Now, trust me.. in an earlier experiment in journalism I hung out in a warehouse in Japan where they made fuckable mannequins.. these don’t stand a chance. Sure, they’re built for telepresence…
The robot’s actions mirror those of the remote user, whose movements are monitored by real-time face tracking software on the user’s computer. Users can also transmit their voice through the robot’s embedded speakers.
.. but you just know they’ll have preset ‘routines’ or have playable ‘games’ for them, soon enough too.
The UK company Peratech, which last month signed a deal to develop novel pressure-sensing technology for screen maker Nissha, has announced that it will use the same approach to make artificial “skin” for the MIT Media Lab.
Peratech makes an electrically conductive material called quantum tunneling composite (QTC). When the material is compressed electrons jump between two conductors separated by polymer insulating layer covered with metallic nanoparticles. QTC has already been used to make small sensors for NASA’s Robonaut and for a robotic gripper made by Shadow Robot Company.
QTC robot skin could perhaps let a robot know precisely where it has been touched, and with how much pressure. It could also be helpful in designing machines that have better grasping capabilities, and for developing more natural ways for machines to interact with humans.
The company says QTC can be screen-printed as a flexible, robust sheet as thin as 75 microns or made into a coating just 10 microns thick. Because the material reacts only when a force is applied, it consumes little power. And it’s flexibility will let it conform to unique robotic shapes.
First factory robots, then better prosthetics and in the future, whole new sensory organs for posthumans, I say.
An Italian who lost his left forearm in a car crash was successfully linked to a robotic hand, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts, scientists said Wednesday.
During a one-month experiment conducted last year, 26-year-old Pierpaolo Petruzziello felt like his lost arm had grown back again, although he was only controlling a robotic hand that was not even attached to his body.
…
Petruzziello, an Italian who lives in Brazil, said the feedback he got from the hand was amazingly accurate.
“It felt almost the same as a real hand. They stimulated me a lot, even with needles … you can’t imagine what they did to me,” he joked with reporters.
While the “LifeHand” experiment lasted only a month, this was the longest time electrodes had remained connected to a human nervous system in such an experiment, said Silvestro Micera, one of the engineers on the team. Similar, shorter-term experiments in 2004-2005 hooked up amputees to a less-advanced robotic arm with a pliers-shaped end, and patients were only able to make basic movements, he said.
Experts not involved in the study told The Associated Press the experiment was an important step forward in creating a viable interface between the nervous system and prosthetic limbs, but the challenge now is ensuring that such a system can remain in the patient for years and not just a month.
Scientists of the University of Pennsylvania are creating electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body, through the use of thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates.
While implanted electronics must usually be encased to protect them from the body, these electronics don’t need protection. The whole process is pretty much seamless: The electronics on the flexible silk substrates conform to biological tissue. The silk melts away over time and the thin silicon circuits left behind don’t cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick.
To make the devices, silicon transistors about one millimeter long and 250 nanometers thick are collected on a stamp and then transferred to the surface of a thin film of silk. The silk holds each device in place, even after the array is implanted in an animal – so far the technique is tested on mice – and wetted with saline, causing it to conform to the tissue surface.
In a paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, the researchers report that such circuits can be implanted in animals with no adverse effects. And the performance of the transistors on silk inside the body doesn’t suffer.
The researchers are now developing silk-silicon LEDs that might act as photonic tattoos that can show blood-sugar readings, as well as arrays of conformable electrodes that might interface with the nervous system.
This is some serious industrial design/car pr0n. From Pink Tentacle:
In Mazda’s vision of the late 2050s, advances in molecular engineering have rendered metal-based manufacturing obsolete. The rise of ubiquitous computing and artificial intelligence drastically accelerates the automotive production cycle…A “haptic skin” suit consisting of millions of microscopic actuators enables the driver to experience the road psycho-somatically while receiving electrical muscle stimulation from the onboard AI guidance system…The vehicle’s entire structure is comprised of a 100% reprototypable, carbon nanotube/shape memory alloy weave with a photovoltaic coating, which allows the vehicle to mimic the driver’s body movements while powering the in-wheel electrostatic motors.
Developed by MIT students Carnaven Chiu, Xiao Xiao, Keywon Chung, and Peggy Chi , SOS: Stress Outsourced is a networked wearable system that allows users to send and receive massages anonymously. A new type of haptic social networking (or social therapy), SOS allows stressed individuals to send anonymous signals via the wearable to a global social network. In response, individuals within the network calm the stressed victim by sending them a “massage” stroke.
….in the case of Artificial Muscle (the company), which has developed tech enabling a silicon film to expand or contract when a voltage is applied to it. It’s currently being used to create small pumps and linear actuators and the like, and is now is being pitched as a solution for feedback in touch-sensitive devices. The silicon film is thin enough to be inserted beneath a touchpad or touchscreen, moving the surface appropriately depending on what you’re stroking on-screen as shown in a video demonstration below. Impressively this tech will only cost “a couple dollars” to add to any given device, meaning even cheap netbooks could start coming with fidgity touchpads soon.
Last night I built a haptic compass, also known as the Clown Belt. This is a belt which features twelve vibrating pager motors equally spaced around the perimeter of the belt. The control box uses a digital compass to determine which way is north, and continuously buzzes the appropriate motor. The effect is subtle but noticeable. I feel like I’ve been granted a strange new sense of direction.
The belt has additional features: it can be connected via serial to my iPhone which delivers up a bearing to an arbitrary destination. I have a first generation iPhone, which means my current location is highly approximate, but for distant locations it works great. It can also be controlled wirelessly over an XBee RF link, but the peculiar application of that is the subject of a future post.
Researchers at the Mixed Reality Lab have developed a system where a person can pet a faux chicken and have the real chicken, miles away, feel the sensation through a specially worn haptic jacket. Chicken “petting” is not super sensational, but the technology behind it is the real star.
The technology is still in it’s infancy, but:
The team is investigating the possibility of “internet hugging” and plans to develop an advanced haptic suit for humans, which will incorporate tiny air sacs, compressors and valves to impart a “high-fidelity” feeling of being hugged.
Touches, created and shared between users. Sound familiar? The little tactile sensations are still years away from being developed, but the brick road of haptic interface shriekygirl culture just had another development piece added to it.
Also:
The team will begin work on the human version of the haptic suit in August, and estimates it will take about a year to deliver the first prototype.
A full haptic suit? Reminds me of a part in a book, where the humans wear the full haptic suits – and what happens to them when someone takes the suits over…..
“Called Love Canvas, the phone allows users to send texts, pictures, emoticons and vibrations expressing the sender’s emotional status. you can draw and send the shape of heart that conveys the feeling of love.
When you write “I love you” on the screen, the receiver can read the same phrase on the screen of his or her own mobile phone. You can also send various emoticons and vibrations by touching the screen.
We’ve seen tactile displays of all shapes and sizes, but none quite like this latest creation from a group of researchers at Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University and the University of Nevada, which promises to be at your disposal whenever you need it. That’s possible thanks to the electroactive polymer material the display is based on, which consists of eight layers of tiny actuator films that have been sprayed with electrodes in a specific pattern, allowing the skin to be stimulated without any additional electromechanical transmission. In addition to making it possible to wrap the display around your finger like a band-aid, that also makes the system extremely power efficient and, apparently, cost effective and easy to manufacture. As with other tactile displays, the researchers say this one could be especially useful as a braille display for the blind, although they don’t see any shortage of other potential applications, with them foreseeing it being used in everything from virtual keyboards to tele-surgical gloves.
Haptica is a movable Braille timepiece for the visually impaired, which enables the user to get a quick and accurate time reading while maintaining user discretion.
Brain-computer interfaces have been kicking around for a few years now, but they’re relatively slow and unwieldy, which kind of puts a damper on world-domination plans — the guy with the keyboard would probably be well into the missile-launch sequence by the time you’ve strapped on your dork-helmet. That might be slowly changing, though, as Caltech researchers are working on a robotic brain-computer interface, which can currently be implanted directly into non-human primate brains and move itself around to optimize readings. Although the MEMS-based motor system that actually moves the electrodes is still being developed, the software to do the job is ready to go, and the whole system being presented this week at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Pasadena.
Technology will enable new forms of intellectual networking and augmented reality. The Share concept enables communication and sharing of information through personalized codes formed in subgroups of likeminded individuals.
By tagging content to locations, group members can challenge each other. Actual and virtual worlds will blur. In this example, the Share concept is customized for skateboarders.
Feel the touch of your loved one
Touching is a very intense and personal form of communication. People share their deepest feelings by touching. Feel is a phoneset concept for couples. Tactile sharing trough simulated touch. Real physical communication – what if you could touch your loved one via your mobile phone?
In the future, the user interface will eventually step out of the display. Feel has a specialized user interface and touch simulation to enable deep communication.
I like these a lot! Everyone’s saying these will most likely come to market via Nokia. Guys, if you need a beta-tester.. ping me!
…a pair of bracelets built to simulate the common and playful exchange of touch amongst mates, loved ones, or even close friends. Whenever either of the wearers touch the bracelet worn on their wrist, the location, pressure, and movement of the touch is replicated on other wearer’s wrist. The bracelets connect each wearer via wireless radio and allow for a form of communication that could be whimsical and fun, as touch often is, or it could grow to be a more intricate form of bodily communication.
It is a sensor-equipped glove, known as HandTalk , that can translate gestures into spoken words on a cell phone. It was developed by students at Carnegie Mellon University as part of a class research project.
… When the glove is held in a fist, for instance, the cell phone says “Good morning.” When the index finger, second finger and thumb are extended, it says, “I’m having a good time.” And when the index finger, little finger and thumb are held out, it politely says, “Thank you for your time.”
… Along each finger and the thumb of the glove are flexor strips, which change their electrical resistance, depending on how much the digits are curled. The positions of the fingers are read by a chip and transmitted wirelessly to a cell phone, which is loaded with a vocabulary that corresponds to the gestures.
The cell phone then types the words as text messages, and an off-the-shelf program translates them into speech.
Mr. Bhat said HandTalk so far has been able to learn 15 of the 26 letters in the American Sign Language alphabet.
To learn the others, though, the team will have to add pressure sensors and accelerometers to the glove to determine when fingers are touching and how much the hand is rotating.
And to fully accommodate ASL, the system will have to use two gloves and measure the relative position of both hands.
Awesome win for assistive technology. But, so am I the only one that sees the fun you could have combining a system like this with head-mics for a game of laser-tag or paintball? Running around, making all those hand-gestures like Marines are always doing in the movies!
The Vital Jacket® is a wearable vital signs monitoring system that joins textiles with microelectronics. It was designed and developed to be a usable pragmatic approach for different clinical and normal life scenarios, in hospitals, home or on the move, that need continuous or frequent high quality vital signs monitoring from the patient or healthy subject. The concept was designed and specified based on the long tradition on biomedical instrumentation and telemedicine of the IEETA institute of the University of Aveiro, Portugal (www.ieeta.pt/sias).
The Vital Jacket® HWM mobile device is an intelligent wearable garnment that is able to continuous monitor electrocardiogram (ECG) wave and Heart Rate for different fitness, high performance sports, security and medical applications.
There are currently two versions, HWM100 that stores data on a SD memory card for posterior analysis in a PC and, HWM200 that allows on-line visualization using a smartphone/PDA.
An Italian who lost his left forearm in a car crash was successfully linked to a robotic hand, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts, scientists said Wednesday.
