NTT's Cool - Human Area Networking Technology

kvsnut writes "I4U is reporting about NTT's research project called RedTacton - It 'safely turns the surface of the human body into a data transmission path at speeds up to 10 Mbps between any two points on the body.' There is a pretty interesting site (uses flash) setup to showcase the technology. If you want to jump to a non-flash overview, try here. It be cool if I could sync my Treo (I'm saving for) by just touching a cradle (or heck the PC)."

Comments

Re:"safely"...

[RabidChicken]

Hate to break it to you, but you have thousands of "radio waves" (actually consisting of many different frequencies, there's nothing magic about radio) going through your body like it or not. If you can prove there's something wrong, then by all means, tell us, with a link, to a peer-reviewed source.

Not new

[lma]

Using human skin as the medium to conduct signals for communications is a concept that has been around for years. See for example this computer.org article (PDF).

Someone else mentioned the Microsoft patent.

The interesting thing about Microsft's patent is that it includes power, not just data.

Larry

Re:Well...

[Entropius]

Not for its given bandwidth at its given range, however.

Contact across the skin implies a range of ~1 meter; at that range the required emitted power for a clear wifi signal is on the order of microwatts.

Here's some links

[SirSnapperHead]

No, some of them are not peer-reviewed, they're inconclusive but they're still food for thought.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4113989.stm
http://www.mindfully.org/Health/2002/Mobile-Phone- Radiation20jun02.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/08/link_betwe en_mobile_phones/
http://www.microwavenews.com/clearerpicture.html
http://www.emrnetwork.org/schools/macopinion.htm