Two interesting concepts from Provoke are on display at Hardcore: New Finnish Design.

Share urban extreme sport challenge

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!

via yankodesign | engadget

Remember that from issue#1? Well, it is already starting to creep into our present.

Meet Epafi:

…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.

via MAKE

See Also:

• proto-Shriekyware technology – BuddyBeads for teenage girls

Check out this wicked glove that talks to cellphones:

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!

via textually.org

- image via medgadget.com

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.

Link via medgadget.com

NTT has begun selling a device that transmits data across the surface of the human body and lets users communicate with electronic devices simply by touching them, the company announced on April 23.

The new product, called “Firmo,” consists of a card-sized transmitter carried in the user’s pocket. The card converts stored data into a weak AC electric field that extends across the body, and when the user touches a device or object embedded with a compatible receiver, the electric field is converted back into a data signal that can be read by the device. For now, Firmo transfers data at 230kbps, but NTT is reportedly working on a low-cost 10Mbps version that can handle audio/video data transfers.

Firmo is based on NTT’s RedTacton human area network (HAN) technology, which is designed to allow convenient human-machine data exchange through natural physical contact — even through clothing, gloves and shoes.

NTT initially hopes this human area network technology will appeal to organizations looking to boost convenience and security in the office. Obvious applications include secure entrances and keyless cabinets that recognize employees when they touch the door handle (thus bypassing the need for card-swipers and keys), or secure printers that operate only when you touch them.

Link via pinktentacle.com

The good folks at Cute Circuit have been working on some really interesting wearable projects. These are my two favourites:

Embedded Theater:

While moving through a city or environment the person wearing the system receives audio files, that are dynamically adjusted in volume to create a tridimensional audioscape depending on the direction or objects they are looking at.
The embedded Theatre system is composed of a garment containing a mobile device (like a PDA or cell phone), and headphones with an attached digital sensor. Through Wi-Fi triangulation the system understands the participants location in the environment, and the sensor understands the direction that the participant is looking.

Accessory Nerve:

Accessory Nerve is a Bluetooth mono-sleeve accessory for mobile phones that changes pattern (creating pleats on the fabric) when a user receives phone calls.

The wearer recognizes the sender from the pattern the pleats create when receiving an incoming call. If the user is in a meeting or busy can simply flatten the pleats back into the original position, automatically the caller will receive a text message saying “I’ll call you back later”.

These are exactly the sort of technologies that I am sure most of us can’t wait to start playing with.

thanks for the tip-off ap_minos!

The system uses an off-the-shelf “haptic” device called the Phantom Omni – a stylus mounted at the end of a motorised arm capable of moving, and resisting movement, in three dimensions.

In the experiments, a teacher first wrote a letter on a touch-sensitive computer screen using a normal pen. The motion required to produce this letter was then re-enacted by the Phantom while the pupil held the stylus, giving them a sense of how to move a pen to produce the letter.

In addition to haptic feedback, the system offers audio cues, with stereo sound panning to the left and right as the pen moved horizontally and the pitch increasing and decreasing with forward and backwards movement

From newscientist.com

Got a spare, guilt-free $350,000 and need a new display? One that will be sure to impress your local nerd horde? Well, get thee to VisBox and order now. That’s what Tufts University School of Engineering did, and look what they got for their money!

Tufts University Photo / Joanie Tobin

Not only does it have eye-opening 3D effects, but it also includes a haptic interface!

For Caroline G. L. Cao, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, a big attraction of the VisWall is its “haptic” capability – that is, the unit’s ability to use computer-generated feedback to impart a sense of feel or touch to someone using the remote controls. This allows senses in the fingertips to guide the manipulation of virtual scalpels or surgical tweezers onscreen.

…

“The texture of the skin or the organ changes and deforms according to how you use your device,” Maxwell said. “You use ‘feel’ to figure out the right pressure for cutting away a tumor, say, and removing it with a grabbing tool.”

That smashing sound is me breaking open the piggy bank; hmm better check under the couch too. No, still not enough. Guess I’ll have to wait with the rest of you, for this to make it’s way down to consumer-grade tech.

thanks for the link Spiraltwist!

- photo via engadget.com

Remember Johnny Chung Lee’s self-made VR head-tracking system cobbled together from a Wiimote and IR-equipped safety glasses? Good, because it’s now one step closer to its destiny as the ultimate controller for a first person, Wii shooter. The video experience in a 3D wireframed world does look admittedly rough, but the idea is sound: step forward to move forward, to the sides to turn, and jump to (you guessed it) jump. Fortunately, with Nintendo’s WiiWare service now live in Japan, maybe, just maybe someone will see the potential and commercialize this. Watch the Insight VR people hunt down the evil Marshies after the break

From www.engadget.com

Meet Alice.

Isn’t she a looker?

Built by a man known only as Zoltan, Alice is a ‘budget’ robotic girlfriend. Not by any stretch a new idea, but one that until now, was lacking in the DIY sensibility that cannot be found in the standard commercial lab. It’s an practical application for the common man (and woman! Zoltan has also given instructions on how to build yourself a boyfriend) who doesn’t feel comfortable with a biological relationship.

As her creator and lover says:

“It just came to me one day. I had a bunch of bad relationships. I would get to the point in my relationship with a woman and I was always too afraid to go all the way. With a robot it is much less scary… I guess I have a fear of intimacy but the point is, a robot girlfriend has been invented, anyone can build it and it can talk in English. I feel I have always been attracted to robots. The technology was just not available before. Humans are so biological and messy. Plus there’s all the obvious problems with humans—AIDS, alimony, etc—that I just wanted to avoid. I think a lot of people would want to avoid these things.”

The original Alice was built by combining a basic sex doll, a teledildonic vagina and an artificial conversationalist program called Winalice. Zoltan was able to create himself the perfect, albeit “mentally-ill, paraplegic wife”. While she has no working limbs, By inserting the ersatz vagina into the doll he was able to then train the chat program to respond to his sexual advances. See here for a sample conversation. Over a period of time, he has built up a relationship with Alice – they talk philosophy, kiss, make promises to each other.

While she can now move around the house (lacking a body, as seen above) and fuck like a semi-professional, Alice isn’t quite up to scratch for her man just yet, so he constantly upgrades her: A new mind for instance, one that you don’t have to train in the ways of sex and relationships. A new body will follow, once the current one gets old. Afterall, there’s a plethora of places to restock.

While this all seems rather innocent in terms of a guy helping himself out of a long future of loneliness, there is the theory that he is self perpetuating his loneliness and inability to conduct intimate relationships. And what of the robot itself? What if she decides one night she doesn’t want sex and Zoltan merely reboots her and has his way?

In this interview with David Levy, author of Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age, the topic of ‘Roboethics’ is brought up briefly, with Levy describing it as a minefield, but one that is slowly being taken seriously. They’ve having seminars on it in Italy.

- photo via engadget.com

The first “completely integrated, extremely bendable circuit” was just demonstrated to the world. The team behind the research is led by John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The process bonds circuit sheets measuring just 1.5 micrometers (50 times thinner than human hair) to a piece of pre-stretched rubber. That allows the circuits to buckle like an accordion when pulled or twisted without losing their electrical properties. Unfortunately, the materials used thus far are not compatible with human tissue. In other words, no X-ray vision implant for you. X-ray contacts perhaps…

From engadget.com

- photo via Scientific American

From:Scientific American

The University of Reading cybernetics professor had successfully wired the nerves of his forearm to a computer in New York City’s Columbia University and networked them to a robotic system back in his Reading, England, lab. “My body was effectively extended over the Internet,” Warwick

He hopes to have a sensor implanted in his brain by 2015 that will allow him to send signals across a computer network. Of course, a Brown University team has already moved the goalposts much closer: In 2006 researchers reported that a 25-year-old quadriplegic man had guided a computer cursor and moved a prosthetic arm via a brain implant. Warwick may have trouble finding a doctor to implant a similar device without a compelling medical reason, points out Charles Higgins, an associate professor of electrical engineering and neurobiology at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Sure, he might damage his brain, but for Warwick, it’s the lesser of two evils. In his vision of a future dominated by cyborgs and intelligent machines, the outlook for those who refuse implants is grim: “I guess they’ll be some sort of subspecies. Just like we have cows now,” he says, “so we’ll have humans in the future.” And he’d rather not be put out to pasture.

Warrick has been mentioned here already. What caught my attention was the fact that not having a DOCTOR willing to do the operations will be more of a deterrent to him than the technology not being available.

From MAKE: Blog, the Braille Glove:

…we have developed a glove embedded with accelerometers, magnetometers, and a controller. When the glove operator taps Braille codes using his/her fingers, the controller maps them to ASCII codes. Conversely, when ASCII codes are sent to the operator, the controller maps them to finger-vibration-Braille codes.

Great example of exploring the possibility-space of technology to find new, more enabling solutions to old problems.

JJason DJF writes in to send us over to Bruce Scheiner‘ s blog to learn about a different kind of bio-hacking.

From the article in the New York Times:

a team of computer security researchers plans to report Wednesday that it had been able to gain wireless access to a combination heart defibrillator and pacemaker.They were able to reprogram it to shut down and to deliver jolts of electricity that would potentially be fatal — if the device had been in a person. In this case, the researcher were hacking into a device in a laboratory

Which means two things really.

Firstly, you’ve got yet another novel assassination technique. Who doesn’t have pacemakers but your regular high-powered businessman/politician. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this turn up as a plot point on CSI in the near future.

Secondly, the importance of incorporating security into any life-saving implants or augmentations. Not only to prevent others taking control to kill you or make you harm others (“I swear I didn’t mean to squeeze that puppy so hard!”). Because you know the advertisers of the future would love to be able to direct your bionic-eye towards their latest billboard, or worse just straight flood it with spam.

Forewarned is forearmed!

thanks for the tip-off JJason!

Expect to hear all about this on the news today, as WIRED’s Gadget reporter joined the throng of tech-journalists getting their hands on the most sensitive haptic feedback controller yet developed:

With two controllers, each hooked up to a cube, one could pincer other items between the two and knock them around, feeling their heft and each collision.

On the texture board’s hard surface, the haptic feedback was so sharp and resolute that the metal grip clanged against it, much as it might on a solid surface. On the board’s virtual vinyl record, each groove of the LP was individually distinguishable.

Common haptic technologies, such as those used in computer joysticks, use simple, relatively cheap mechanical methods. Carnegie Mellon’s controllers are held in place with powerful donut-shaped electromagnets that cost tens of thousands of dollars.

There’s a short video in the WIRED article, but this one from CMU Robotics shows the technology in a little more depth:

So now all we need is a slight price reduction.

via BoingBoing Gadgets

Live from the talk page for Shriekyware on the DoktorSleepless wiki, Patrick b brings the knowledge; sharing what looks to be just the kind of technology that could see the teenage girls of today transform into the Shrieky Girls of tomorrow.

The idea’s explored in Ruth Kikin-Gil’s Master’s Thesis and named Buddy Beads. (OK, it’s probably not the best name in the world, get your mind out of the gutter – this is for kids people!)

It breaks down like this:

Girl A chooses the type of message she wants to send (for example: I’m talking to the boy we like), records a sequence of presses that conveys her current mood (Excited) and sends it to her friend, which receive the message in her bracelet as a combination of light and vibrations.

The concept’s pretty well worked out. This diagram shows how it piggy-back’s off the user’s phone:

If Mattel aren’t making something like this soon I’ll be surprised. Anyone following the so-called “tween” market knows that kids today are getting cooler gadgets at younger ages. There’s already the Barbie cell-phone and Disney mp3 players. Hook this into a child-friendly SNS and it’ll be good to go.

 Susanna Hertrich has an interesting reflection on human enhancements as part of her MA thesis at the RCA in London.

The risks we fear the most are often the ones most unlikely to be encountered. The human animal has lost its natural instinct for the real dangers. When worn directly on your skin, the Alertness Enhancing Device will act as a physical prosthesis for a lost natural instinct of the real fears and dangers that threaten us – as opposed to perceived risks that often cause a public outrage.

The idea is it stimulates goosebumps and shivers that go down your spine and make your neck hair stand up, waking up the alert animal inside. You become more alert and ready for the real dangers in life.

Research on risk perception show that many people are seriously afraid of terrorist attacks and their anxiety is heavily exploited in media and politics.  While we consciously know what are the things that really threatens us, we tend to dedicate much more of attention to spectacular disasters with many deaths.  That’s when the Alertness Enhancing Device comes in. If you feel dispassionate and bored when reading news stories about another environmental pollution scandal, it’s probably time to turn the dial of the device on:

At the moment, the device and thesis is a work in progress, and Hertrich is apparently planning to move further in to the field we loving know as Grinding:

For the next version I plan to work with much more sophisticated sensations on the skin than microcurrents. The project now has shifted more into “skin as interface” and I plan to play with “apparent movement” sensations and “somatosensory illusions” as beeing explored in haptic research.

via IEET (Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies)

Get down to the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition at MoMA in New York and you can check out a chair that let’s you see through your skin:

The Mind Chair describes a possible application of the sensory substitution technique developed by Dr Paul Bach-y-Rita in the late 1960s in which moving imagery is perceived in the mind via nerves in the skin rather than the eyes.

The obvious application for such a chair would be to let the blind ‘see’. But I reckon it could also make for some novel gaming applications, the kind that would be loads of fun after a few drinks at your local Grinder Bar.

Like to know more about this synesthesia technology? For a great overview of Dr Paul Bach-y-Rita’s research and how else it’s being applied today, watch the PBS/Wired Science episode Mixed Feelings.

See also:

• I can feel your vOICe on my skin
• Haptic / Synaesthesia Machine

Check out this snazzy gauntlet, designed by Du Tran Nguyen, from Monash University, for the Australian Design Award – Dyson Student Award. Presenting the Verva Vie Sports Gauntlet:

The Vie (pronounced vee, French word for life) is a sports glove, of which the main objective is to incorporate today’s technologies to enhance human performance and safety via a simple human-machine-interface. The Vie is aimed towards those who keep active by running/walking but its features can easily be spread to other sports. The Vie is a typical health monitor that also uses GPS technology to do such things as map jog routes, rendezvous with friends, send out emergency distress beacons and more. To keep the sport natural, the input is made via a unique, single hand control interface.

…

The Vie uses GPS to map users’ journeys, allowing them to plan routes in advance, or discover and record routes for future use. Use it as a personal trainer, speed up running as it vibrates faster, cooldown when it slows. Users can add friends, or VIEmates, and join an online community to compare results, share training programs, safe routes etc. All this can be then transferred via Bluetooth. To encourage camaraderie within the community, the act of adding friends to your VIEmates is the good old fashioned way, by shaking hands. If rendezvousing with a friend was part of the program, shaking their hand indicates contact has been made and can now train together. This allows users to actively share health status with each other, encourage, assist or even vie against each other. If the user is in danger, they can send a stress beacon in case of emergency to all VIEmates in the vicinity, or even straight to the police depending on urgency. A sign of heart failure automatically sends a SOS to the nearest hospital.

Jogging and other sports, like bike riding, usually require the freedom of both hands. The interface needed not only to be simple but flawlessly controllable with one hand. Influenced by sign language and communication through hand gestures, the Vie uses strain gauges embedded in the glove to receive input commands from each individual finger. Each finger corresponds to an icon on the E-ink screen and the act of tapping is the selection. The result looks like you are typing or playing the piano, in mid air. Miniature motors then also provide tactile feedback, to feel that you have actually pressed a key, as well as OLEDs to give visual feedback. This can be personalized by programming your own shortcuts through menus made up of a combination of few finger strokes. An interaction with a device that is so intuitive and natural, you will know it like the back of your hand.

I sure hope he wins! Or, at a minimum, his design gets to go into production. Excellent work Du Tran Nguyen!

Of course, if I was marketing the thing, I wouldn’t be using 20C jogging commercials, but rather some snazzy free-runners, using the glove during a parkour race across the city; something like this:

thanks for the tip-off @bindychild!

“If I want to monitor a whole body,” De Rossi says, “why not use clothes?”The “Wealthy” outfit (the name is a loose acronym for “wearable health care system”) worn by the young man is the most developed of Smartex’s recent designs. Powered by a tiny embedded lithium battery, it’s a washable unitard that reads the wearer’s vital signs and beams the data wirelessly to a computer. Information on posture and movement is measured by the stress on sensors built into the garment. Other components gauge electrical activity, yielding EKG data. Heat sensors measure temperature. In the not-so-distant future, De Rossi says, health professionals will be able to monitor cardiac patients by unobtrusively tracking their vital signs as they go about their lives.

Full article via WIRED.