CES: X PRIZE Could Make Star Trek-Style Tricorder a Reality (Video)

In January, 2012, Slashdot carried a story about the launch of a $10 million X-Prize for Tricorder design. This year, at CES, Timothy Lord met Alan Zack, who works for the X PRIZE Foundation, and learned a little more about the Tricorder prize and what it's going to take to win it. "Ultimately," says the www.qualcommtricorderxprize.org page, "this tool will collect large volumes of data from ongoing measurement of health states through a combination of wireless sensors, imaging technologies, and portable, non-invasive laboratory replacements." If the success of the Ansari X PRIZE is any indication, it's a rational goal -- and the competition will be exciting to follow as it cranks up.

Comments

Remember the Android Tricorder app that CBS killed

[BlackSupra]

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/09/02/2229200/android-tricorder-killed-by-cbs

http://web.archive.org/web/20120518031844/http://code.google.com/p/moonblink/wiki/Tricorder

Ultrasound

[chispito]

We have a newborn and I was a little frustrated how little data is obtained from a fetal ultrasound. Surely, with the right processing, a more accurate model could be constructed of a fetus/internal organs from these units? I don't think there's any way to fit an MRI or CT in the palm of your hand, but maybe a small ultrasound device?

Re:Ultrasound

[gl4ss]

do you really want a 3d print of the fetus, like, REALLY? http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/8/3227461/3d-printing-fetus-japan-fasotec-hiroo-clinic

Only for health?

[jandar]

The standard Tricorder from ST was a general-purpose analyzer. The medical variant wasn't the main type.

Star Trek technomumbojumbo

[Thud457]

The Star Trek tricorder was in part informed by the ideas of Royal Rife where everything under the sun had a characteristic resonant radio frequency.
You could not only identify the virusiod that caused cancer, you should blast it with the right combination of frequencies so it would shake itself to bits like Ol' Galloping Gertie.

As Fort said, "It's steam engines when it's steam engine time". In the 20's and 30's, radio was all the rage. (Likewise, at the turn of the century, it was thought everything could be understood in terms of electricity. 1860's, steam engines.) These days, it's computators all the way down.