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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."

6 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.

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      Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
  2. 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

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      -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: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.