Demo of Spatially Aware Blocks

Chris Anderson writes "This 5-min demo just posted from last week's TED — got a big crowd reaction. It's a new technology coming out of MIT, about to be commercialized. Siftables have been seen before, but not like this. They're toy blocks/tiles that are spatially aware and interact with each other in very cool ways. Initial use may be as toys, but there's big potential for new paradigm of spatially-aware physical mini computers."

Comments

How long before they become self-aware too?

[Bruiser80]

I for one welcome our modular overlords.

Watched this last night...

[Facetious]

I subscribe to the TED channel in Miro, and it so happens that I watched this last night with my 11-year old son. I was impressed, but for me a better indicator of a product's viability is how my son perceives the product. He thought they were awesome.

Cube World Anyone?

[TheRealMindChild]

How is this different than Cube World?

A lot less useless the Minority Report

[DrYak]

But still, these blocks are a lot less useless than Oblong's display or Microsoft's surface. (Which none the less were largely touted technologies) Because :

- The blocks stay on the table. You won't need a gorilla arm to operate them, unlike the Oblong's "spatial operated environment" which require you to stand upright and hold your hands in front of you.

- The display is on a screen in front of the user, thus the user is looking naturally straigh ahead. No need to bend the neck of a table like with MS' surface.

- The block provide tactile feed back as they are physical object, making the user aware of how the software might interpret the movements. (unlike Oblong's SOE - Which might interpret unrelated movement of the users' hand as command-gestures)

- And they are an improvement over MIT's previous inductance-based tokens, as they have mini display helping the user understand better what he's doing.

How do you charge them?

[RevWaldo]

Hopefully you just dump 'em in a box and they inductively charge. Otherwise the demand for power squids is gonna go through the roof.

Uh-huh

[BigBlueOx]

I believe the first Replicators were built to be toys too.

Uh-huh

Re:A comment on the comments:

[Whorhay]

I was thinking along the same lines.

They'd probably be excellent for teaching children to read and write. Just combine it with software that reads or tries to read the words the child spells by combining the letters. The child could be given a specific set of letters and rewarded by how many words they can spell correctly using the set. Or you could have the program pronounce words and the child then reproduces the word with the blocks.

Granted these are all things you could do with a computer now, but this obviously allows for easier manipulation by the child and is more intuitive than using a keyboard. Not to mention it might be indistinguishable from a game in the childs eyes. And getting kids to enjoy and actively seek out learning is probably the biggest hurdle in our educational system.

Re:These are real

[dreemernj]

The Cube World stuff he linked to is a series of children's toys. They are physical blocks with little stick figure people in them. If you put them together they recognize the connection and react. You can also do things like tilt them to interact with the stick figure people.

The Siftables at TED are much more capable and more powerful. But there are at least some basic elements that are almost identical to the CubeWorld toys.

One of my younger cousins has these. She loves them.