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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)."
Well, here's one thing: Security.
One thing we lost when we went from wired to unwired is security.
That is: A physical cable is a physical incarnation of authorization. Without that cable, we now have to put password mechanisms and other authorization stuff into previously simple connection.
This body network is another, easier, mechanism for authorization. If the two components are connected by your body, they are authorized to talk with one another.
Now we just have to worry about people running past to touch you, in order to steal the photographs off your camera, or whatever.
If I have a phone with a contact you want on it, I'll just let you hold my phone while you hold yours and then you give it right back. It'd take less then a second for us to sync contacts without plugging in a single thing. This could be done while walking down the street, and another aspect of it is that its more secure then using blue tooth or other wireless transmission that tends to not be encrypted. The potential for this is pretty amazing. Another one I can think of off the top of my head is if you wear something like a watch or chain that sends a constantly shifting key through your body (similar to the rsa little devices), then simply by touching something you could verify you were the holder of a credit card or other miscellaneous forms of authorization. It'd be like a digital fingerprint. If your groceries are tagged with rfid, have a scanner find the cost of everything in your cart, then you simply touch a little piece of metal or something to pay for it. The whole process could take less then a second. Another possible use is to place sensors on steering wheels... This could reshape how we interact with the world. Now if only they can find a way for the body to retain that information for short (or long) periods of time. We'd be walking harddrives, so much for a 40 gb ipod...just touch the headphones to your skin somewhere.
Regards,
Steve
The real drive behind this is the usage for mobile phones. Here in Japan, mobile phones have become the dominant data handling device. Phones here have the full rolodex, appointment calendar, mp3 player, as well as Final Fantasy/Tetris/CowboyNeal game-of-choice. There are adapters coming online now that will let people browse MSWord and Excel files via their mobile.
But the drive here is a great social need: when groups go out to dinner, friends, co-workers, business partners, etc. there is always this 10-minute ritual where everyone has to call everyone else in the group, in order to capture their phone number and contact information. If NTT can issue phones where everyone trades this information by touching hands, then they have an edge over the others.
Japanese protect their privacy vehemently, but are also information hoarders much greater than their US or EU equivalents. Phone rolodexes are huge-- people have every contact they met in the last 4 years (which is in the thousands if you work in Tokyo).
davejenkins.com |
Could our PDAs swap business cards via a handshake? What will come next? VIRUSES?
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
I have to wonder if these patents will have a chilling effect on their ability to compete in the marketplace.
I think this would be a good thing, since this technique would make it feasible to interface your 'preferences' (stored on a wearable computer) to various electronic or smart gadgets (a smart car/house/etc) so that as soon as you touch it, then the smart gadget is customized to you.
I suppose a simple application, would be if all cars supported this, then as soon as you touched the door latch then: 1) The car door would open, since the car verified who you were. 2) The seat would adjust to your body height 3) The radio would automatically tune itself to your preferences 4) Your playlists would be imported into the radio.
Your preferences can be stored in something relatively small. For example your watch can have this technology and it transmit your preferences to whatever smart gadget you touched.
What would really be neat, is if there were some method of biofeedback so that you could configure your preferences by 'thinking about it'. At that point, we would have something similar to the "Ancient's 'Automated' Technology" as shown on StarGate: Atlantis tv show.
This would probably be great for one's own devices (cell, palm) but using it for auths exposes the toucher to a variety of diseases, especially from public interfaces. People would probably be loathe to use this to pay for something, if they have to touch a contact point that's been touched by everyone before them.
Also, there's the possibility that someone could pick up your auth sig from a handrail or doorknob or something... unless you have to enable the auth for something like the next transaction, or the next x seconds, or key in some kind of id that indicates which touch is authorized. That adds a level of complexity that defeats the whole point of the touch interface.
this isn't a sig. i type this (including the two dashes), every time i post, just to make it look like a sig.
Didn't Microsoft already patent something similar?
Microsoft Patents The Human Body As A Network Bus
Seems to me that the obvious entry point is a new wireless optical mouse with this built in. Then you could buy (or it ships with) a memory unit that the user wears. Poof, instant computer usage...secure password storage, configuration data, small files of any kind.
My two questions are:
1) can I do a multidrop connection. There is precious little detail about whether my cell phone, pda, mp3 player, watch, HUD (hey I can dream) all play together seamlessly. If so this will kick so much ass.
2) IIRC the field surrounding the human body is fairly unique to each person...can it be used as part of a biometric system through such a device. This seems kind of unlikely, but would be an interesting low security id system.
And we wonder way cancer is so rampant.
Join Tor today!
But imagine my iPod with headphones using my body as the 'wire'.......
One fairly serious human limitation is the speed of nerve signals. There's about a 100 ms lag between the brain and the hand, longer for the feet.
Not that that's not adequate for everyday life, but if the nerves could somehow be rewired to use this channel instead, reaction times could be seriously lowered with very interesting consequences in several different fields, such as sport, combat, driving or any other physical activity where speed matters.
I realize this will not happen tomorrow, but OTOH I can't think of any fundamental reason that it's impossible.
I'm just waiting till I can buy my new HAN watch with all my environmental preferences and ssh key hash. I'm imagining sitting at any computer and as soon as my hands touch the keyboard, it configures it the way I like it. Heck, at 10mbps, given sufficiently small storage, My hands could touch the keyboard and it could connect to the PC on my wrist for all the data and programs I take with me all the time. PC terminals will replace desktop PCs and even laptops. The PC becomes truely personal, something you don't even notice you're wearing until you need it. Daddy likes.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Hmm, next time you're near an oscilloscope, try touching your finger to the input. Inspect the signal. Should be about 2 volts of 60 cycle hum, with maybe 10% ragged noise superimposed. Raise your other hand toward the ceiling lights-- the voltage should go up to maybe five volts of raggedy hash. Now touch something grounded-- the voltage should go down to maybe a tenth of a volt, now mostly high-frequency hash. It's unlikely your body is going to make a good data path. Ungrounded, it's a walking antenna for all kind of noise. Grounded, it's a pretty good short to ground. These folks are trying to make filet-mignon out of road-kill-- not very likely to succeed.
... but if you read through the site, alot of the "suggested applications" seem to assume that the little "mobile device" you have on you stores an awful lot of personal information. Sitting down on a plane and it knows whether or not you're in the right seat? Reaching for medecine and an alarm going off because you grabbed the wrong one?
It better be damned well encrypted, because I don't want to sit down on a park bench and suddenly the guy beside me knows exactly who I am and has access boatload of my personal information.
Now, this is less of an issue if, say, my medicine bottles know that "Antyrael" not supposed to be using them, and my "portable device" just says "Hi, I'm Antyrael, what's up?", but that really doesn't sound feasable.
So, I guess what I'm (long-windedly) saying here, is yes; these devices could certainly, shall we say, usher in a new "era" of secure authentication, since only your personal device activates your stuff. But, done wrong (and there are many ways this could be done horribly wrong), this could also spawn greater security risks than ever before.
And what if someone STEALS your personal unit? Suddenly they can authorize themselves as you just by touching a doorknob/mouse/whatever? I shudder at the thought.
</paranoia>Expectations are for the unprepared.