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New Material Responds to Touch Pressure
Vassily Overveight writes "CNN has an interesting article about a lightweight, malleable conductor named Peratech that can detect, measure and respond to a range of pressures "from the lightest touch to the heaviest hammer blow," and that can be incorporated into fabrics, plastics, and other solids. Listed potential applications include roll-up keyboards (hey, I have news for them: it's already been done) and clothing that monitors bodily functions." Hey its saturday, what do you want ;)
Yuck, scented goatse.cx spam...
... doesn't mean it can't be done better.
New: ceramic knives! Nah, stone tools have been done before.
New: silver halide photography! Nah, oil paintings by a master are better.
New: cloth rollup keyboard! Nah, thick rubber keyboards rule.
[
I can hear it now coming over the PA system: "Billingsly, get up off your ass!"
This stuff will certainly be used by an aircraft manufacturer. Determining surface pressures on test aircraft is a really big deal. Wing loading and all that. If the stuff produces repeatable and linear output it should be just the thing. I recall performing some impact tests on a coating that acted like the multi-layer forms we've all used. Micro-capsules rupture under pressure and produce a color change. Problem was very limited use - one shot then recoat the model. The traditional way is to use prssure tranducers plumbed to a tiny port on the skin. They work but they're pretty expensive and they only tell you what's happening at that point. This new plastic sounds perfect.
Dammit, I thought you were gone for good. Go crawl back under your rock, worm.
As long as the voltages are kept low it shouldn't be a problem. You wouldn't notice a few volts shorting across your skin. 9 volts is barely at the detectable level. Place your toung across the terminals of a 9 volt battery. Most circutry is 5 volts or 3.3 volts. I expect it to lower to about 1 to 1.5 volts in the future.
But I ask you - what freedom does the GPL take away? The answer of course is none. Your freedoms are already abridged by copyright law. The GPL restores some of them to you if you agree to it. You only gain.
Obviously, you get even more with other licenses, and you're not restricted from doing anything at all to material in the public domain. But that doesn't mean that the GPL is bad because it gives you less - do you accuse people of being uncharitable when they give you $20 instead of $500?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
They've finally made Imipolex-G. Can we look forward to human-guided missiles now?
One of these days/I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
[...] a lightweight, malleable conductor named Peratech that can detect, measure and respond to a range of pressures "from the lightest touch to the heaviest hammer blow," and that can be incorporated into fabrics, plastics, and other solids.
Another (and probably obvious) application of this technology is plasticised sheets of it sandwiched between a bare floor and the less expensive and more cleanable layer of vinyl flooring or plush carpeting. Home, hotel or company electronics could detect intrusion by the mere presence of footsteps, or distinguish between behaviors of footsteps (their heaviness and frequency) associated with certain people who are authorized or not to be in certain areas.
Parents would always know where exactly was their terrible-two's baby at any given minute, with an alarm set to go off if the footsteps headed into the basement with the cat-eating rats or into the attic with the medieval edged weapons collection from Crazy Uncle Frank. High-class hotels would appreciate the ability to track when guests left their rooms, so that cleaning maids would know when to clean their rooms, and long-term-care hospitals (dying homes, if you must) would appreciate the ability to track dementia patients without needing to tag them like animals or to confine them to their rooms at night.
The Orwellian implications of all of this are thick enough that I won't bother to beat them to death with the skull of a horse.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
But I ask you - what freedom does the GPL take away? [...] Obviously, you get even more [freedom] with other licenses, you're not restricted from doing anything at all to material in the public domain.
Exactly. You answered your own question. A less restrictive license grants more freedom than a more restrictive license. $20 and $500 are both charitable, but one is more charitable than the other.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I've fallen... and I can't get up!
> speed control of a motor by button pressure
Such a control would be quite hard to use, at least at first. Most tasks we are familiar are require positional accuracy, not force accuracy. Witness the popularity of mice over joysticks.
Ryan
I was thinking more along the lines of...
Jones, according to our computer, the arm, elbow and wrist movements you make while sweeping the floor are not in compliance with the corporate standards.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I'd be perfectly happy to do that, except for one thing:
:)
I have a fairly common disability that inhibits the accuracy of motor control in my hands...In other words, I can type a heck of a lot faster than I can write.
I'd make a great sketch-pad, though.
What's this Submit thingy do?
That makes sense. I've kinda been wanting to try an electronic set, but could never afford it.
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In absolute terms, true. When you start thinking about negative-feedback applications such as a "power-assist" to an arm or leg, though, this stuff would make a great sensor material. Current negative-feedback systems use a series of switches; this stuff would allow much finer control of the motion because it could tell between a slight adjustment (very small force) and a sweep of the arm (very large force). Further, as the force of the feedback falls, you can slow down the motion actuator in anticipation of a stop or reversal, which reduces the oscillation that could happen between operator and extension.
It's 'Edward' R. Murrow. Perhaps you can get a job as a /. fact checker.
I don't think the redundancy should really worry anyone on Slashdot...
Hey, I heard there's a CNET news article about a wireless device by Sony called the airboard. It's not completely flat though, so it's probably a counter-top appliance, rather than a knee-top...
Ñ'
If it recognize the amount of pressure put on a button, why not let it recognize the pressure you
put on the skin of a complete flat "no-key"-keyboard, when writing out letters and words with a "pen".
Instead of opening the usual notebook's monitor to the top and the keyboard being flat on the table, you could open up the (flat) monitor to the left (as if opening a book) and let the right be a soft flat writable notepad.
You would not press the buttons on a plastic keyboard, but press a pen while handwriting your input to the computer. Together with a handwriting recognition program and the unique pressure each person would use while writing out letters and words, the computer might recognize the pressure of how you write (press your pen) on the skin of the notepad.
Should work. Then we had a reusable notebook together with an e-book on the left hand side. You could actually teach handwriting to kids...And may be even recognize each person's handwriting clearly enough as a measure of identification ?
A net loss in freedom for someone who's not the copyright holder. For the copyright holder, I guess it would be no loss of freedom at all :)
this would be great for robots that needed to manipulate fragile objects, no more crushing since it is more sensitive than older methods.
== www.FreeBSD.org == The Power To Serve. ==
You will never have a trigger with no dead zones. It's a conspiracy.
Less seriously though, why do you play triggers? You'd never have triggering problems if you just played accoustics.
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Packing tape that warns when it is approaching crush or impact thresholds and sets an externally visible and audible alarm when those thresholds are exceeded.
Link the tape to a sort of "packaging passport", a device that registers (maybe by a barcode reader or similar tech) who handled it and where.
You could then print a report of the handling history when you get your package.
"No, I will not sign for this, because storeman #41 dropped it at your Minnesota warehouse at 10:43 AM on Wednesday."
Sure, it's not for small ticket items, but I think it'd be worthwhile for scientific/medical instruments, big-arse servers, etc. You could also employ similar techniques for the seals on those big steel shipping containers.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Had the submitter bothered to read the article, he wouldn't have mentioned the FlexBoard as an "It's been done" item. The article specifically referred to musical keyboards. In the case of a piano, or even a decent keyboard/synthesizer (yes, we used to call them that), the more force you apply to the keys, the louder the sound. This material enables that technology much more readily than anything else currently. I doubt you'll see it in many concerts anytime soon, if only due to the tactile feedback issues.
Just a word to the wise: Read the article before you *submit*, let alone post.
Raptor
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Wouldn't this be great for Virtual Reality suits? I mean it would be better if it were the opposite...Matierial that would "Touch" you back when you "Touched" something in a VR World.
"I think you know what I'm talkin' about, Mr. President; We're gonna kill us a mummy!" - Bruce Campbell as Elvis Presley
This would provide a surprisingly simple way to build an electronic keyboard with weighted keys to feel like piano keys, and a pressure sensitive sensor so that they *play like piano keys.
From the description it should be much more sensitive than piezoelectrics. Think about it, have an actual felt hammer hit something. Say a short length of taut nylong cord. Except you've got some of this material stretched over the hammer. You could build the whole mechanism as though it were a piano, but without the bulk of all that goes into the piano to actually make noise.
This should be a lot more responsive than keys that are merely velocity sensitive.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
That was a good episode.
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
So I'll ask again - what freedom does the GPL take away that you have by default under copyright law?
Your answer had better not be 'the freedom to distribute binaries of code copyrighted to others, without a license" because you DO NOT have that freedom due to the law. Not the GPL, the law.
The GPL does not grant as many freedoms as it could, but your statement that it results in a net loss of freedom is bogus.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
get one used...alot of peple buy them and decide its not for them. Ig et alot of great cheap shit that wayh :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Exactly. You answered your own question.
What kind of rhetoric double-talk is that? The GPL was created to keep people from taking code and using it for proprietary purposes. It was created to force people to contribute back to the community instead of simply stealing others' work. The fact of the matter is we live in an age where money is determining our morality. Witness the Napster debate - most people don't consider it wrong to download music, so long as it is done without the intent to profit (by means of reselling).
The GPL is a logical extension of the morality and mindset of the people in this community. We're tired of being exploited by big business. We deal with it in the real world - violations of our privacy, destruction of our right to free speech and the systematic elimination and compartmentalization of our vocation and avocation - computers.. reducing our profession to little more than whoring ourselves out to the highest bidder.
The GPL was created because of shortcomings in the BSD, artistic, and public licensing schemes where corporations could take your code without asking you. This gives you the right to say - "No - my code, my rules." This is the legacy of the GPL - it has empowered programmers to take back their authorship rights. Compare it to the Microsoft Windows NT EULA, and reflect on it. You might find the GPL isn't so bad afterall.
The GPL isn't about granting new freedom; it's about preserving what little we have left.
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This is very true. I have an Atari 400 with a membrane keyboard (which I would suspect uses said peizoelectric material), and that keyboard became very difficult to use after only 8 or so years of use, and is now sadly collecting dust because of its near-inoperabilaity
The skin of a fingertip is not representative for all the surface of the human body. Sure, there are some spots that are more responsive ;), but all in all not so.
Where did you get 500 Hz from, it "sounds" enormously high (we can't see/notice more than 70-80 Hz). Also, the human brain does not account for deformed bodies. It learns coordination from experience. A drastically simpler way in the computational sense. To create specialized robots, we should learn from this.
- Steeltoe
Complex minds find complex answers.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I had to say this. Imagine the BEOWULF cluster of these.... :-)
Anyway, I totaly agree with the 'It's just the way it is' guy above my post. Slashdot has missed some great submissions with more interesting data that this clumsy attempt at 'show them diversity of thoughts'. You'd be surprised how much gets slunted for rejection 'just because'. The only nice term I have for CmdrTaco and Hemos is 'sloppy editorial'.
Like, where in hell all the interesting, free-speech stuff? Whatever happened to the Recording companies selling overpriced CDs? To Microsoft's Kerberos screech? To Olimpics shutting out Internet et al? It is not us, repliers off-topic, moderated to be politically correct. It is the editorial stuff being too young and uneducated.
Yeah, it's called piezoelectric materials, and they were discovered during the time that Plato and those cool Romans were out sprinking their food with lead to get a buzz.
The things that pass for "new" these days.. *groan*
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Cool! Now we can have pressure sensitive buttons that report how hard they're being pushed--real applications could be things like speed control of a motor by button pressure. More fun things would be devices that say "OW" when people push the button too hard or that randomize the required pressure to activate the button.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Now employers can make employees wear uniforms made of this material so that employers can continuously monitor the actions of employees.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I would absolutely love a patch that would go on my shirt or the edge of my pillow that would let me turn on and off lights, dial phone numbers (speakerphone required, of course) browse the web, etc, all from the laziness of my own bed.
Ok, tech companies. You have demand, go make it so we can buy it.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Cool.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Now only if someone could think of a humorous way to apply this to a "DON'T PANIC!" button.
Austin
why do i get the feeling that i'm going to, in the not so distant future, be reading about a product incorporating this material in the back of dirty magazines as the new alternative to phone sex?
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
Actually, I think the more interesting use for materials like this is giving tactile feedback to robots. That would go a long way to make them able to pick up delicate items.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I have some material that responds to sight pressure.
Think of this - make an entire NFL uniform out of small cells of this stuff, and a little box that transmits a map of the forces experienced by each cell over the surface of the uniform. Then you could superimpose a color-coded force map over the footage of the player wearing the uniform and see the forces experienced in, say, a receiver getting slammed by the safety in a slant over the middle.
Maybe this stuff could be used to improve protection for athletes, automobile drivers, jet-fighter pilots, and that Aussie Crocodile Hunter guy.
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The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
Does this mean I can finally get a set of drum triggers that dosen't have dead zones?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
This Public Service Annoucement was sponsored by Jesus Christ, who would like to remind you that the only thing He wants for Christmas is your love, and filthy pornography.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
And a "digital scent" technology that could enable consumers to send scented e-mails and smell fragrances as they shop online.
I don't think that this is a good idea. Properly scented spam? You can use your own vivid imagination to figure out other abuses of this technology. Of course, scented /. posts would be acceptable.;)
Seems like a very Star Trek-ian technology.
But I guess if you assume people are stoned on Saturdays, then you might be using a bit too much to follow that.
Information wants to be free
Information wants to be free
So what? Guns want to kill, but we have laws against that.
Piezoelectric materials are brittle and thus limited in how they can be used. This stuff is essentially metallic particles coated with a conductive polymer, and can be used in a variety of ways. Their claim to uniqueness is that no matter how high the metallic loading, conductive paths aren't formed. More info here.
- tactile sensors for remote operations of unmanned vehicles
- sensors for martial sports (fencing, karate, boxing ("oh my god, Mike Tyson just bit his opponent's ear with the force of a hyena!"))
- input devices for wearable computing (after you tap one spot with sufficient pressure, the rest of the keyboard on your pant legs activates).
- biomonitoring (adaptive gel shoe soles that register how hard you are jogging; chairs that provide support based on your seating preferences)
- intelligent furniture (it shouts/emits a high-pitched squeal whenever a pet is on it)
- Giant dance floors that trigger odd sound/lighting combos (anyone remember coley groups from Shockwave Rider
- Soldier/Policeman status monitoring (a layer of this placed inside their clothing/vests would alert whenever the wearer had been assaulted)
- Office cube walls that are input devices as well (embedded phones, temperature controls, etc)
Okay, that's the end of my two minutes of brainstorming.Information wants to be free
Information wants to be free
So what? Guns want to kill, but we have laws against that.
Better yet, no more lost remote controls (although the power struggle between two people wearing 'remote-enabled' pajamas might be fierce.)
Or in you could have ropes that know when they are about to break.
Or build it into bricks to report back uneven loads in buildings after natural disaters.
Just some of the non-porno things I might do with it.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Only this kind of selfless dedication to the high ground of journalistic ethics can insure that the beloved /. reader gets nothing but the cream of the crop, the actual, factual skinny.
Edwin R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather would be proud of the kind of selfless dedication to their craft that makes the /. crew get up early on a saturday morning, tries to remember how many shots they had last night, click the first srory in the cue and go back to bed.
[with apologies to Walter Cronkite]
"I'm Rob Malda, and that's the way it is . . . [mumble] untill my hangover clears. . . what was her name?"
the next new gag gift: pants that start a large, flashing sign that says
"HE'S GOT A HARD-ON!!!" Imagine that for a public prank (:
Their web site is severely deficient of details. While it is expected that for proprietary reasons, there would be some secrecy involved, the near-complete lack of information draws this whole thing into question.
Of course, the entire reason for having the story (both for CNN and Slashdot, and the Sacchi award, for that matter) are only for "gee-whiz" appeal. Anyone looking for a rational exploration and supported claims will be, as usual, entirely disappointed.
If it can differentiate between "the lightest touch" and "a hammer blow," perhaps it can be used for shopping-cart and telephone-pole collision detection, and autmatically signal a camera to take a picture, or light the flamethrower, or something.
___________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
cool.. if only thay could make this stuff transparrent.. we could have all those cool panals from Star Trek
Transparrent aluminum!?
No no Scotty, Transparrent Peratech.