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Blind Soldier Uses Tongue To "See"
Zen found this story about a blind soldier using a lollypop-sized tongue sensor to 'see.' The system actually enables him to walk and read unaided. The guy says, "It feels like licking a nine-volt battery or like popping candy. The camera sends signals down onto the lollypop and onto your tongue, you can then determine what they mean and transfer it to shapes."
Thank god this system uses a camera and a tongue sensor. The title made me think of that creepy guy on the bus that licks everything.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Yet another example of the adaptability of the human brain. I wonder what the resolution of such a system would be? What's the possibility of being able to read with it?
And a minor pedantic point. It's not a sensor on his tongue. A sensor is an input device. This is an output device (relative to the computer "device")...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
He has his problem licked!
"Ith theelth ike hicking a gnine-holt batthery or hike popping khandy."
From this guy's experience, a majority of stuff looks just like chicken.
before long, he won't be thinking about deciphering "square", "circle", "room" etc. If my understanding is correct, he really will be able to see with his tongue, in the same way you or I see with our eyes. It'll wire the tongue up to the vision center.
The brain is flippin' cool.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Speaking of bad movies, imagine this guy doing De Niro's Taxi Driver thing... "You lickin' at me? Are you licking at ME?"
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Groucho Marx
Yet another example of the adaptability of the human brain.
More than some might realize.
Some decades ago (when a camera was not practically portable) a similar device was built with an array of vibrators on the back for the interface. This worked as well (though the resolution was necessarily low both because of the size of the vibrators and because the back has a low density of touch sensors).
But one event was telling:
At one point the camera tipped over into the scene it was viewing. The subject reflexively threw his hands up to "protect his eyes". (Later the blind-from-birth subject said he now had a referent for the word "looming".)
This event implies that the subject's brain had routed the input from the touch sensors on his back into his visual processing at a stage before the "dangerously close incoming object" detection. So he was "really seeing" without eyes.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way