Demo of a New "Sixth Sense" Technology

TEDChris writes "Here's an intriguing attempt at a versatile new tech device that tries to augment the wearer's five senses. It comes out of Patty Maes's group at the MIT Media Lab. By combining a computerized personal projector with a camera and linking both to the Net, a host of surprising new applications becomes possible. This 8-minute demo created a lot of buzz at TED last month and was posted online today. Would love to know what the Slashdot community makes of it."

Comments

Sixth Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Turns out that the character played by Bruce Willis was shot dead at the beginning of the movie.

Warning: the preceding was a spoiler.

Re:Sixth Sense

[PCM2]

Dr. Manhattan killed Rosebud? That was Charles Foster Kane's favorite sled!!

Re:Sixth Sense

[SenseiLeNoir]

The only issue i have is that there is actually already more than five senses in the human body.

In addition to:
- Sight
- Hearing
- Taste
- Smell
- Touch

There is:

- Balance and acceleration
- Temperature
- Kinesthetic sense (the part of the brain that tells the position of various parts of our limbs. Previously this was thought to be related to touch, but its been found in weightlessness, our brains can still "sense" the position of our limbs.)
- Pain (different to touch, as pain can exist without touch.

There are also other senses used for respiratory, etc.

One possible application

[Locke2005]

Now you really CAN see dead people!

spidy sense!

[jollyreaper]

Now all we need are web casters, ultra-sticky material for the hands and feet, and someone to beat Tobby MacGuire with a bar of soap in a sock if he comes anywhere near it.

I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

I, as a typical human, have plenty more than five senses. I would have hoped that people's understanding of their own body would have continued past grade-school.

But in any event, I welcome yet another sense beyond my current twenty-something.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[DrLang21]

This isn't a "sense" at all. A "sense" implies something that provides continual information about your immediate environment. This is just another human interface to a computer. Nothing to see here.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[JustinOpinion]

I, as a typical human, have plenty more than five senses. I would have hoped that people's understanding of their own body would have continued past grade-school.

Yup. This is a pet-peeve of mine, too. Humans have between 9-16 senses (or more), depending on how you want to count/divide them. The "5 senses" idea dates back to Aristotle... and we've learned quite a bit about the world and the human body since then. Frankly it's ridiculous that even in grade school children are told that humans have 5 senses: it's patently false. And it's quite easy to demonstrate otherwise (e.g. ask a person if they can sense which way is down).

It bugs me to no end that these kinds of basic science mistakes are repeated ad nauseum.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[von_rick]

The purpose of putting the term "sixth sense" in quotes tells you that it clearly isn't a sixth sense in literal terms. They are just calling it so because they couldn't find any other term which would make people sit through the whole demo, which btw was ultra-sleek.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Goldsmith]

Depends on who you ask...

I would say we have only 4 senses: chemical, light, pressure and temperature... but part of my job is to work on electrical analogues of sense and often this boils down to the most basic properties. For example, telling which way is down is just an application of a pressure sensor, even though it's nothing like a sense of "touch".

Of course, I understand completely that a neurologist is going to have a different opinion, which is correct in its own way, and probably more similar to how a computer scientist would think of things.

But, yeah, the 5 senses thing is pretty dumb.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[tsm_sf]

Should I get off your lawn?

Re:I already have more than five senses

[MozeeToby]

1 & 2. Brightness and Color
3. Hearing
4. Pressure
5. Pain
6. Temperature
7. Smell
8-13. The different Taste Receptors
14. Balance/acceleration
15. Proprioception - Knowing where your body parts are. If you don't believe this is a sense check out the Pinocchio Illusion
16. Vasodilation in the skin (blushing)
17. Sensing a full bladder/bowels
18. Intestinal discomfort (not actually pressure nerves, that's just how your body perceives them)

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Curtman]

I did. Looks like a specialized PDA with internet access.

Yeah, just like that except you aren't holding a PDA in your hands, it's projecting on to surfaces that you are looking at.

I predict that the technology is far too expensive for a consumer device.

Again, I predict that you didn't watch the video. They built it with "off the shelf" parts for $350.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

Pain, proprioception, thermoception, orientation, direction, acceleration, balance, . . .
Ever seen a cop perform a field-sobriety test? You know, before breathalizers? It specifically tests balance and proprioception -- stand on one leg, eyes closed, and touch your nose. The only way it tests any of your five is because you need to hear the cop speak the directions.

Build a robot, or design any physical machine, and see how many "sensors" you need before it can do anything. Your laser printer has a dozen sensors just to align the paper!

In my world, possibly the same as yours, "grade-school" is indeed hyphenated; in part because it is a unified term. In "grade school", "grade" is an adjective where "school" is a noun. In such syntax, "grade" modifies "school". I was not referring to a school on a hill, or to school which teaches about grading. Now, I was talking about a school which is gradual, and hence "grade school" would have worked, I was not referring to the entire academic system in which education is taught gradually. I was referring to the subset of years consisting of grades 1 through 6(ish), commonly coined "grade-school".

Similarly, I could have used "elementary-school", however "elementary school" would have been a school that teaches the periodic table, or the basic elements of some other industry.

See, "adjective noun" is a general form of English, where each word is considered according to its individual definition. "adjective-noun" is a specific form of English, where the compound-word (or "compounded word", because "compound" is a noun, and "compounded" is the adjective here) is considered according to a non-Englist lexicon, often industry-specific jargon.

They taught me your way in grade-school, when they told me that I was in grade school. That's my point. My education continued beyond grade-school where I learned that I had not only attended grade school but I had also attended grade-school; and I learned the important distinction.

But I'll ask you the same question I ask of people who argue "whom" versus "who". "How many times have you said the word 'whom' in the last year?" Many of them realize that they've never used it, and that's when they realize that they must be making some mistake. So in your case, when was the last time you used a hyphen? If you answer is unreasonable, then clearly you aren't utilizing the entire English language properly.

A lot of people have been dropping hyphens over the last sixty years -- twice my life-time. But hey, people say "there's five of them over there" because they don't seem to realize how ignorant and hick-town it sounds when expanded to "there is five . . .".

Re:I already have more than five senses

[node 3]

I would say we have only 4 senses

And I would say you're too smart for your own good. A sense is an aspect of the physical world you can detect, it's *not* the type of physical phenomena being utilized in the sense. Otherwise, all senses are just chemical (or electro-chemical, if you want).

The sense of up and down is distinct from the sense of rough or smooth, even though both use pressure, just like a radio antenna and a roll of photographic film are distinct even though they both measure electromagnetism.

Overlay on my glass instead...

[sam0737]

I hope I can get the information overlay'ed on my glass instead of projecting out. First it should get better contrast, second I don't need to display what I am looking to the public.

Put the calibration aside, I would need to start wearing glass...Or should we get the video overlay signal injected into the brain?

Re:Overlay on my glass instead...

[nine-times]

Yeah, that was my reaction. It's one thing if all the information being displayed would be a standard default, but as soon as you customize what data to show you, you're already displaying private information about yourself whenever using this. It'd be much better if it was displayed in a format that was private, that only you could see.

Beyond that, if it's something mounted in your glasses, it seems like it opens the potential (perhaps) to track eye movement and therefore guess at what you're looking at. That might open the door to have it make more intelligent guesses as to what kind of information you're looking for, instead of just displaying information about whatever happens to be in front of you.

But I gather from the video that this was all just supposed to be a starting point or proof of concept rather than an actual product. Maybe given an investment, building it into glasses would be more feasible.

Re:How the Hell is this a sense, or even useful?

[carlmenezes]

A lot of technology is the combination of existing pieces. What makes it useful is how the pieces are combined. Are search engines useful for that matter - they're essentially queries running on databases right?
Besides, it's a demo of a work in progress. You could have come up with this - but did you? Did you even think about it and envision it as completely as it was presented in the video, let alone implement it?
This is a work of genius. Please do not belittle it.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Locke2005]

Imagine all the great opportunities for gaslighting people you don't like you could create by hacking into this device while somebody else is wearing it!

Solution in search of a problem

[Locke2005]

When is the MIT Media Lab going to start working on something that is actually USEFUL to the common person? Say something in the field of teledildonics, for example.