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MIT Researchers Create a Cheap "6th Sense" Device

Posted by timothy on from the it-will-tickle-your-fancy-if-you-tell-it-to dept.

thefickler writes "MIT researchers have combined a mobile projector with a webcam and mobile phone to create a device that draws information from the environment. For example, the gadget recognizes products on store shelves and can provide product and price comparison information. The sixth-sense device was cobbled together from common parts costing just $300. While the gadget is not being primed for mass release, it represents a forward-thinking way of blending technology with our environment."

17 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Well I'm stoked by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Funny

    "For example, the gadget recognizes products on store shelves and can provide product and price comparison information."

    Finally, we've discovered all 6 senses: Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and targeted marketing! =D

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
    1. Re:Well I'm stoked by DriedClexler · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, it's ridiculous to call this a "sixth sense". Reading information from a hand-held device is not an additional sense.

      Now, if we were still living 100+ years ago, when people were far more limited in what information they had access to at any given time, *maybe* you could get away with saying this is another sense. But considering that cognitive science researchers -- many probably at MIT -- have had significant success in giving people genuine additional senses (i.e. allow them to observe the world in some way without directly being told the information or thinking aboug it), it's extremely misleading.

      For example, one time on slashdot there was a story about how scientists fed a compass-like transducer into some guy's nervous system, which allowed him to just "know" about changes in the earth's magnetic field or nearby magnets. And in Jeff Hawkins's On Intelligence, he talks about an experiment where they mapped a low-res black/white camera to an array of rods on someone's tongue that push down for black and let up for white, which allow the subject to see without his own eyes.

      Those are new senses. This device isn't.

      --
      Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
    2. Re:Well I'm stoked by evanbd · · Score: 3, Interesting

      My brother and I built one of those. Scroll down to the comments, there are pictures and a description of the circuit. It's not as sophisticated as the MIT one, but it definitely works.

      That, or an implanted magnet to sense EM fields, constitute a "6th sense" imo. Not this.

      (If there's interest, I could be convinced to create a digital version of the schematic and a more complete circuit description with parts list, etc.)

    3. Re:Well I'm stoked by evanbd · · Score: 4, Informative

      Soldering isn't hard. Learn what a cold solder joint is and how not to make them (short version: heat the joint, then let the solder melt on, don't "paint" it on). Use leaded solder (far easier to work with than the lead-free stuff). More doesn't help; it just gets in the way. Don't overdo it. Tin your tip properly when you first get it, and keep it clean with a wet sponge. Oh, and practice a bit on pieces of wire instead of pricey components :)

      The only schematics that were created on that project were napkin sketches and annotations on the datasheet printouts. I'll draw something up, but not before this weekend. I'll post another reply when I do.

  2. At the heard of the device... by mrbene · · Score: 4, Interesting

    At the heart of the device is a smartphone that uses an Internet connection to retrieve information.

    Further analysis shows that the heart is actually a team of codemonkeys madly devoting all waking hours to understand the hundreds of different data formats needed to supply even the most basic integration.

    Seriously tho, the main cost to developing this would be getting integrated with all the different potential data providers. Recognizing a physical bar code is easy. Looking up the current price at nearby retailers? More difficult.

    1. Re:At the heard of the device... by esampson · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've got a T-Mobile G1 and there are actually a couple of different programs that do this. The one I'm using (and it seems to me the majority of people are using) is ShopSavvy.

      It seems to do a pretty good job of identifying products by barcodes as long as they aren't storebrand items. Its ability to locate the same item at other local stores isn't that great but my guess is that with time they, or someone like them, will build a large enough database and the necessary connections with retailers to make that work. Until then it is mostly useful for looking up reviews for books/DVDs/music and seeing how much I would save going to Amazon, letting me know if I'll save enough to make it worth my while to wait.

  3. Minor pet peeve by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I already have a sixth external sense... it's the sense of acceleration in my inner ear, colloquially known as the sense of balance. That one's just as important as the other senses.

    Of course, there are other more minor senses that are subsets of the sense of touch, like heat and cold, which are actually different mechanisms, but those are arguable as truly separate senses. There's also the sense of body position, whose name escapes me, but that's not an external sense.

    What was TFA about, again? :)

    --
    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    1. Re:Minor pet peeve by snicho99 · · Score: 5, Informative

      There's also the sense of body position, whose name escapes me, but that's not an external sense.

      Proprioception
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception

      --
      -Steve http://www.stevennicholson.com
    2. Re:Minor pet peeve by dpilot · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I read an article in the past year about a different "sixth sense" experiment. They made a belt of cellphone-type vibrators, then controlled them such that the northmost vibrator was activated. In essence a built-in compass. Subjects quit noticing the vibration after a few days. Within a few weeks, they had "perfect direction," and it wasn't just the ability to point north, or any other particular direction. Their sense of distance, position, etc, were all much better. The big point of the experiment was to see if an adult brain could internalize and integrate the new information source.

      It could.

      I want one.

      Though it occasionally abandons me, I generally have a very good sense of direction. Let me study a map, get oriented, and I can usually get you there. I can usually give bearing and distance to an arbitrary destination in the general area. But I'd like my sense of direction to be PERFECT. (or darned close to it)

      Incidentally, the effects persisted for several weeks after the device was removed.

      There's also talk about a magnetic grain embedded in the heads of some animals. They've studied the grain, and found that it's the largest size that can naturally be a single magnetic domain. Smaller, and it gives less "signal". Larger, and it splits into multiple domains, and again gives less signal. Sounds like a natural magnetic compass to me. Maybe there's a little bit of residual prewiring in the human brain for such a directional sense, which is why the vibrator belt experiment worked so well.

      --
      The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    3. Re:Minor pet peeve by Tomun · · Score: 4, Informative

      You perhaps read this, and you're not the only person to want one. This guy also built one, and perhaps we should too.

    4. Re:Minor pet peeve by arb+phd+slp · · Score: 3, Informative

      There's also the sense of body position, whose name escapes me, but that's not an external sense.

      Proprioception

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception

      Kinesthetic. It's the feedback to the motor centers about how stretched your muscle fibers are and how much tension they are under.

      --
      There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
  4. You came up with that all by yourself? by NonUniqueNickname · · Score: 3, Informative

    Scanning a bar code and looking up info and prices on the internet is such a a cool idea. In fact, it's such a super-cool idea that it won a prize. Last year. On Android. See:
    http://code.google.com/android/adc_gallery/
    and
    http://www.android.com/market/#app=compareeverywhere

  5. WTF Slashdot is disappointing me with stories... by topham · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ok, I'm getting seriously disappointed with slashdot. A story about a webcam, cellphone and automatically look up crap online? Fine. The technical aspects are interesting; but sixth-sense slant? Kill it before it breeds.

    I have a god-damn cellphone with camera and internet and I don't think it's a sixth-sense feature when i use it to look something up. COME ON; it isn't 1971!

  6. Sixth sense by jd · · Score: 4, Funny

    By fans of the Fifth Element
    Programmed in Forth
    Costing you the third of your hundred dollar bills
    Sold by advertisers with second sight
    Redundant by the tine the first is sold

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  7. Re:surely this is not too suprising by jbloggs · · Score: 3, Interesting

    it it clear that you have no idea what this device is actually doing, but since the article was so bad i'm not suprised. i, on the other hand, am at the media lab and have seen it in action. it makes the entire world around you a touch-sensitive device that can be digitally interacted and augmented with.

  8. Sixth Sense!? by Vertana · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Am I the only one who read the headline and said MIT created a way to see dead people!? Of course it would be MIT...

    --
    "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec^2" -Marcus Dolengo
  9. Re:umm... by some+guy+I+know · · Score: 4, Interesting

    sight, hearing, touch, feel, taste, comparison shop? This isn't a sixth sense, no matter how you spin it.

    Actually, humans have quite a few senses other than the five commonly described; it's just that most of them are internal (sense of hunger, etc.).
    One that is external, and sometimes called the "sixth sense", is the sense of balance.

    --
    Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana