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"The sixth sense" (wearable electronics)


Goblinz
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It's funny the mix of thoughts I had upon watching this...

On the one hand I see it as no big deal, a natural extension of commonplace technologies we have today, and an implementation of them which has been proposed by mannny people in the past - it's just that MIT has the funding/time to make it happen.

On the other hand, I cannot help but look at these things and think to myself, shit, not that long ago the hottest personal computer I could get my hands on, was about 20kg heavy and had a monochrome green screen, and even if there had have been such interfaces to that machine, which there definitely weren't (the mouse was new back then) it would've taken several weeks to do what this does in the blink of an eye....

Kinda blows my mind and makes me yawn at the same time :D

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A nice concept, but it still needs some improvements. By watching the video you will notice, how careful the student has to enter data (e.g. see the demo where a calculator is projected on his hand). Any unintended move will quickly lead to a wrong entry. Just imagine entering a mobile number in a train - impossible ;)

IMHO just a technical gimmick, as Stryd says very well: a natural extension of commonplace technologies. Calling it a sixth sense is too early for a human-machine interface which works (mechanically) so slow and/or unreliable.

Let's wait for the first brain proxy and let's use a common keyboard until then ;)

Best Regards, Thorsten.

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I agree. Mind you, give it a couple more CPU generations and software versions...

It could be improved by combining the camera with a side-facing projector in one box. Perhaps an improvement could be made over hanging it around your neck, as I wonder how long it would last bouncing around up there. Perhaps a tap directly into the optic nerve would be better than the webcam/projector thing... ;-P

I'd be interested in how long your battery life is with a projector hanging round your neck. There would surely be a trade-off to be had between daylight readability and battery life. Perhaps the light level sensor in the webcam can communicate to the projector...

Also, I'd like to see how well it survives if you run for a train or something.

(Not that you'd ever need to run for another train...)

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I agree whats been said here.

I do think this thing could be developed further, but it has a long long way to go. I'm guessing that all the items in the presentation were carefully selected. The machine would have been programmed to recognise that aprticular type of plane ticket, bog roll, etc. Ina  real life situation that is going to be a hell of a database which would need constantly adding to, or maybe some sort of futuristic intelligent database?  I also noted that the student had a laptop open ont he table... Wether this was to sort the video for the presentation or whether it was being used to host the program I am not sure. If this things is going to rely on a server connection then communication technology may have to develope a bit first.

The one thing that did make me smile is that somebody has finally found a use for those crappy little LED projectors!

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