Reading the World through the Skin and Ears: A New Perspective on Sensory Substitution DARPA combines human brains and 120-megapixel cameras to create the ultimate military threat detection system After more than four years of research, DARPA has created a system that successfully combines soldiers, EEG brainwave scanners, 120-megapixel cameras, and multiple computers running cognitive visual processing algorithms into a cybernetic hivemind. Called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS), it will be used in a combat setting to significantly improve the US Army’s threat detection capabilities. There are two discrete parts to the system: The 120-megapixel camera, which is tripod-mounted and looks over the battlefield (pictured below); and the computer system, where a soldier sits in front of a computer monitor with an EEG strapped to his head (pictured above). The soldier is linked into the computer system via an EEG (electroencephalogram) brain-computer interface that continually scans his brains for P300 responses. In short, CT2WS taps the human brain’s unsurpassed ability to recognize objects. Now read: Changing the world: DARPA’s top inventions
The future of brain-computer interfaces revealed You may already be having basic conversations with your smartphone, desktop PC, games console, TV and, soon, your car, but such voice recognition is – in the scientific community, at least – firmly in a folder market 'dumb' technology. New ways of controlling consumer electronics goods with both basic voice and gestures are suddenly common, but we could soon be operating computers not by barking out instructions or waving, but purely by thinking. Research into the long researched brain-computer interface (BCI) – also known as the 'mind-machine' interface – is becoming so advanced that it's set to create a whole new symbiotic relationship between man and machine. It could even lead to a situation where speech is rendered useless, and people wirelessly communicate through universal translator chips. No more complaining about loud music in nightclubs, then. Forget about the wireless revolution – this revolutionary tech demands cables. Mind control Express yourself Thinking strategies Cloudy days
NeuroSky Mindwave Mobile Myndplay Bundle Google Glass - will we love it or hate it? 5 May 2013Last updated at 20:16 ET By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter The glasses have a small camera and display built in Google's smart glasses project has been causing excitement in the tech world for months as speculation about what it will finally look like and be able to do reaches fever pitch. Prototype devices are being tested by around 1,000 so-called Glass Explorers and are expected to go on sale to the public next year. While some see such wearable computing as the obvious next step for the digital age, others regard the idea of even more intimate connections with the network quite scary. The BBC has garnered the views of those who have tried Glass and others who have strong views about the project to see what a smart-glassed future might look like. I was the first person on the West Coast to pick up my device and, having had Glass for a few weeks now, I'm mostly surprised at how much there was to learn about using it, and how much more there is to discover. Don't get me wrong.
EEG to help prevent strokes; petting a cat and the prefrontal cortex; beatboxing – this weeks News Roundup! This week in our news roundup: the Discovery Channel highlights how the UPMC Rehabilitation Institute is using single unit recording to achieve greater accuracy and control with brain computer interfaces; an EEG headset to help prevent strokes has been developed in Israel; measuring pleasure stimuli using a consumer EEG headset from neurofeedback company MyndPlay; and beatboxing as seen through an MRI. 1// Using single unit recording to achieve greater control with a BCI The team who helped a woman lift a cup using a brain computer interface, at the UPMC Rehabilitation Institute, are now working on a second study that uses single unit recording. What is single unit recording ? 2// NeuroKeeper develops EEG headset to help prevent strokes Israel- based company NeuroKeeper recently announced that they are developing an external EEG headset, which could be used to give early warning signs of a stroke . 3// On a scale of 1 to 100, measure your pleasure
Technology - 3D printing powered by thought Imagine if you could print objects just by thinking about them. Camila Ruz visits one company to see whether this is far-fetched dream or a real possibility. It’s definitely not a bird. Nor is it a plane. The garish orange piece of plastic, small enough to hold in the palm of a hand, could pass for a missing limb of a toy tyrannosaurus. It may not look all that impressive, but it’s notable for two reasons. This milestone was reached with little fanfare last month at the Santiago MakerSpace, a technology and design studio in the Chilean capital. Engineers and designers have been using 3D printers for more than two decades. “What is the point of these printers if my son cannot design his own toy?” That’s where Emotional Evolutionary Design (EED), the software that allows Thinker Thing to interpret its users’ thoughts, comes in. When those children sit in front of a computer running Monster Dreamer, they will be presented with a series of different body shapes in bubbles. Second nature
Introducing Touchy, A Human Camera from Japan Touchy is a camera that is placed on one’s head and only takes photos when the person wearing the camera is physically touched. Every time a person makes contact with the person wearing the camera head, it will open its shutter like eye-holes and take photos. If the person keeps holding on to the touch of that person, then the camera will take a shot every ten seconds. Developed by the minds of Eric Siu, Tomohiko Hayakawa, and Carson Reynolds, Touchy (The human camera) is a phenomenological social interaction experiment that focuses on the relationship of giving and receiving by literally transforming a human into a camera. This human camera, with its unique interpersonal properties, aims at healing social anxiety by creating joyful interactions. “It is common for humans to be separated into social bubbles, to avoid sharing social space and to connect to strangers,” say its creators. ᔥ Artnau
Hearing Through Your Skin, and Other Adventures in Sensory Substitution | In Their Own Words We’re entering a very interesting stage of human history right now where we can start importing technology to enhance our natural senses or perception of the world. So as it stands now, as biological creatures, we only see a very small strip of what's going on. Obviously, the infinitely large and the infinitely small - our brains aren't even wired to be able to understand that. But even on the space scales that we live at, we don't see most of what's going on. So, for example, take electromagnetic radiation, there's a little strip of that that we can see and we call it visible light. But the whole rest of that spectrum - radio waves, television, cell phone, gamma rays, x-rays, it’s invisible to us because we don't have biological receptors for it. What's very interesting, I think, as we keep pushing forward with technology, is we’ll be able to take more and more data from those invisible parts of the world and start feeding them into our brain. Image courtesy of Shutterstock
InteraXon - Thought-controlled computing - Interaxon Sensors and Actuators A: Physical - A 3D printed dry electrode for ECG/EEG recording a Centre for Microsystems Technology (CMST), Faculty of Engineering, University of Ghent, 914A Technologiepark, B-9052 Ghent-Zwijnaarde, Belgium b Department of Neurology, Ghent University Hospital, 185 De Pintelaan, 9000 Ghent, Belgium c Faculty of Applied Engineering Sciences, CPMT Research Group, University College Ghent, Voskenslaan 362, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium d Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University Ghent, Technologiepark 903, B-9052 Ghent, Belgium Received 4 May 2011 Revised 8 December 2011 Accepted 8 December 2011 Available online 17 December 2011 , How to Cite or Link Using DOI Abstract In this paper, the design, fabrication and testing of a 3D printed dry electrode is proposed. 3D printing represents an authentic breakthrough for the development and mass production of dry medical electrodes. Highlights Keywords 3D printed dry electrode ; Bioelectric signal recording ; Electrocardiogram (ECG) ; Electroencephalogram (EEG)