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"Body Talk" Could Control Gadgets
Fragglebabe writes "The BBC reports that we could soon be controlling our gadgets using small movements of the body, such as a nod of the head. In order to make this possible, 'Audio cloud' technology has been developed by researchers at the University of Glasgow. They say that 'audio clouds could make using mobile devices on the move safer and easier'. According to the article, 'the researchers have developed ways to control gadgets, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and music players, using 3D sound for output and gestures for input.'"
... and I contributed it to the Da Vinci institute's Museum of Future Inventions.
Slashdot regulars will remember the Da Vinci institute from this story.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
From (dead) medialab Europe MindGames section, the Relax to Win game.
Philip McDarby, Daragh McDonnell, Rob Burke A racing game in which each person controls a dragon that moves quicker as they relax. The race is competitive and stressful however the person most relaxed wins. Possible applications of this research are in the treatment of stress, anxiety disorder and attention deficit disorder.
AFAIR, their aim was to actually provides games for teaching humans how to control some physiological signals, in order to enable better (simpler, more natural, ... ?) Human/machine interfaces in the future.
Z.
Folks,
n s.
we've been hearing about control of gadgets, faucets and light bulbs using heat, remote control, computer control, nodding, winking, clapping, voice control and other electronic marvels for as long as I can remember (ie the mid 1970s).
Yet, we're still using light switches whose fundamental design hasn't changed since Edison. We still have doors that open or close (instead of slide to one side a la "Star Trek") manually using something we old-timers call a "door handle". We still open a faucet which is entirely mechanical in design.
Face it, these hyped-up-but-never-deployed electronic marvels are poor quality alternatives to straightforward mechanical design, and always liable to go wrong (especially during a power-outage).
We'll still be using the same stuff in fifty years - just get over it. There are more compelling uses for technology than these solutions-for-problems-that-don't-require-solutio
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
I'm don't think we're insane -- but hey who knows. The idea is to make interaction more natural, not less as you suggest; rather than pressing tiny little buttons, subtle but robust gesture recognition can be used instead. This does NOT mean holding your head really still and twitching carefully or making wild arm movements to control the device.
The point is to make small intentional movements which are discriminated from the background noise of walking, driving and so on. Detecting the intentionality of gesture is a key part of our work. These gestures can be much more natural than interacting using a stylus or a keyboard. Think how sensitive you are to someone nodding to you in the street, even if they're jogging by.
The spatial audio environment can make the system more natural by presenting objects to interact with without using vision -- which is a much more valuable sensory resource when you're trying to dodge buses on a busy street!
Your friendly Audioclouds researcher...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."