The MIT Media Lab’s Pranav Mistry recounted the history of his SixthSense project at TED India this week. SixthSense started when Mistry took the rollers out of two computer mice (mouses?), attached some pulleys, and made a glove-like hand-gesture interface. Moving through SixthSense’s evolution, Mistry talks about some Internet-synced sticky notes, pens that draw in three dimensions, Google maps that interact with physical objects, and other things that, if said by anyone else, would just be crazy talk.
From there, he explains how he inverted the process, in an effort to “paint the physical world with that digital information.” He started with a projector mounted on his bike helmet that would project pixels onto the physical world. He added a camera and the system eventually shrank down to the pendant we recognize as the current incarnation of SixthSense.
In the video, Mistry demonstrates the system by casually doing things that shouldn’t make any sense: Digitally painting on a physical wall, taking a photo of the Boston skyline by framing it with his index fingers and thumbs, dialing a phone number on numbers projected on his palm, watching video of President Obama’s MIT speech on a print newspaper; reading a tag cloud — “comedian,” “geek,” etc. — that appears on comedian/blogger Baratunde Thurston’s shirt when Mistry meets him; playing a video game on a piece of paper; and copying text and charts from the regular kind of paper and pasting them to his crazy, digital paper, just by picking it up and moving it.
Getting a jump on the year end-lists for 2009, Time has declared its Best Inventions of the Year. Some are impressive, some are scary, and many are things whose inclusion requires an inventive stretch of the definition of the word “invention.”
Before we get to that, only two of the inventions listed have local connections — an electric eye developed at MIT, and an electric microbe developed at UMass Amherst. Does Time know how many things get invented around here? I don’t either, but it’s a lot. I’m not sure how many would make the top 50 for a given year, but I’d imagine more than two. Have these people not seen the Happiness Hat? I was at MIT earlier this year and a robot made me ice cream in 30 seconds. That doesn’t rate?
Meanwhile, among the winners were: a paper airplane, a high-school football offense, and a method to Tweet by thought. All impressive, and they round out a 50-click editorial feature nicely, but cooler than SixthSense? One is a decision not to do something, one is a paper airplane, and one is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.
On the downside, the gas mask bra that won at the Ig Nobel awards a few months back was chosen as one of the five worst inventions of the year.
The game isn’t just some nutty hack, either. The students made it to demonstrate developing for unmanned aerial vehicles. The Pac-Man Roomba is controlled by a player using a joystick — the ghosts are autonomous. The Pac-Man robot eats tape “pellets” along its path, including the special huge pellet that sends the ghost robots running in the other direction; and even acts out the death spiral Pac-Man does when he gets eaten.
This could open up a whole new cottage industry of robots jazzing up old games: PackBot Minesweeper, Predator-drone Space Invaders, Artaic Pictionary, Precision Urban Hopper Q-Bert, crazy robot baseball, Petman marathons, etc. Competitive BigDog/LittleDog racing at Wonderland could bring together animal activists, racing enthuisasts, the gaming industry, the tech community and maybe even the Nascar crowd. I’d like to see that industry networking event.
The computer system, which you wear around your neck, projects information on the world around you, which you can then manipulate with your hands. Pretty soon, you may be able to build your own for about $350. Mistry told a TED India panel this week he didn’t want to subject SixthSense to corporate whims.
After the jump, watch Fluid Interface Group director Patti Maes present the technology to the TED conference in March. (more…)
Technology Review takes a look at Charlestown-based Cogito Health, who has developed software to determine whether people are depressed or not based on an analysis of their voices.
The MIT Media Lab spinout is based on the research of Sandy Pentland.
Harvard/Duke/UC Berkeley researcher Vivek Wadhwa — he’s dangerously close to surrounding the entire country with his teaching posts — has told the Boston/Route 128 community what he thinks of its old, cranky behind.
Wadhwa, who caused a stink awhile back when he dared to look askance at some NVCA numbers, says Silicon Valley took a commanding lead in the ’90s with its job-hopping, information sharing, networking, etc.
Which brings me to Boston. Ever heard of Route 128? To my surprise, neither have any of my students at Duke or the entrepreneurs I’ve met in Silicon Valley.
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This organizational mechanism was in sharp contrast to that of Route 128. Dominated by large, vertically integrated, and secretive minicomputer producers such as DEC, Wang, Prime, and Data General. Technology, skill, and know-how were trapped within the boundaries of the large corporations.
Oh … snap. I like the idea of the Boston area tech executive as a collection of C. Montgomery Burnses, and look forward to their withering retorts via telegraph.
To mark the Internet’s 40th birthday yesterday, the Guardian traces the history of the Internet with a dense interactive timeline. Popular Science covers the same ground via text and photos.
Last week, Mass High Tech asked Leo Beranek, “the second B in BBN,” to sit down with MassTLC chair Steve O’Leary, in an exclusive dialogue about Beranek’s career in technology and entrepreneurship. The interview took place at the Harvard Club in Back Bay in anticipation of MassTLC giving Beranek its Commonwealth Award. In the clip above, Beranek talks about BBN’s role in developing the ARPANet, the forerunner of the Internet.
Keep an eye out for the more video of the interview and a complete transcript running on MHT soon.
Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a robot — the Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA) — to offer “the same kind of guidance as an informed and friendly companion.”
The system features an expressive robotic head, pictured above, that would protrude from the dashboard. Nothing creepy there. Media Lab researcher Cynthia Breazeal, Carlo Ratti, and Assaf Biderman are working with the Media Lab’s SENSEable City Lab and automaker Audi on the product.
The robot would analyze your driving patterns, your route, traffic, the weather and other information to guide you. It would also interact with you via expressions, like a smile or the Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph-we’re-going-to-die exclamation point.
Local designer Lauren McCarthy, ex- of MIT’s Media Lab, CSAIL, and Visual Arts Program, developed a hat that detects whether or not you are smiling, and if not, it stabs you in the back of the head: The Happiness Hat.
McCarthy’s web site says the hat is the first in a series of “tools for improved social interacting.” She further explains:
An enclosed bend sensor attaches to the cheek and measures smile size, a servo motor moves a metal spike into the head inversely proportional to the degree of smile. Through repeated use of this conditioning device you can train your brain to smile all the time. The device runs on Arduino.
For my dollar, when I see someone walking down the street with a constant smile on their face, I think “deranged,” not “happy.” But then again, that might be exactly why I need a Happiness Hat.
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