Technabob » communication

MIT Engineer Develops Glasses that Read Facial Expressions

Shane McGlaun — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:57:48 +0000

I have watched the show Lie to Me and I really like it. It’s cool that the character is supposed to be able to tell when someone is lying just by their facial expressions. I wish I could do that sometimes, it would make life much easier. An engineer at MIT named Rosalind Picard has developed a cool set of glasses that claims to be able to read expressions and tell the wearer what the person they are talking to is thinking.

The glasses have a small camera in them that reads the face of the other person and looks at 24 different feature points. The points are then fed into a database to determine what the person is thinking or feeling between six states including thinking, agreeing, concentrating, interested, confused, and disagreeing.

The software portion was developed by Rana el Kaliouby. The pair claims that the average person could determine what a real person was thinking by looking at facial expressions 54% of the time and the glasses got it right 64% of the time.

[via CNET]

Google Wave Now Available to Everyone, Still Confusing

Lambert Varias — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:19:30 +0000

Google’s newfangled instant email brainstorming organizer to-do list thing, Wave, is now open to everyone, no invites needed. So you and your friends, relatives and colleagues can now collaborate in real time and figure out once and for all how you’re supposed to use Wave.

What are you waiting for? If you don’t have a Google account yet, go register and start waving at each other. Then email me and tell me how it works once you’ve figured it out.

[via Official Google Blog]

image credit: Webmasterpro

Messenger Dog: a Phone on All Fours

Lambert Varias — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:23:53 +0000

In an emergency, knowing where your loved ones are and how they’re doing helps remove a lot of the stress. While portable communication devices like phones are already part of our everyday lives, they’re not always reliable – your phone’s battery might run out, or you might not get any signal from where you are. That’s why Laura Boffi, Mary Huang and Li Bian created the Messenger Dog concept. It’s kinda like a rescue dog…except it’s not meant to save you. But it can help you contact someone who can.

The idea is that in case of a disaster or emergency, a fleet of trained dogs strapped with “weatherproof, Internet-connected coats” will go around ground zero, giving people a means to call for help, or even just to let their loved ones know that they’re fine. The system uses an iPod Touch installed with NADA Mobile, “an enhanced version of Mobile Safari that gives you access to the accelerometer, GPS, microphone–and can even be used to read the value of an external analog sensor attached to the device’s mic input (without using a computer or a microcontroller).”

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

I think it’s a neat idea, but this is a very risky job even for a human, and probably moreso for our canine friends who can’t speak human. I’d rather have messenger robots, but if someone can invent the dog collars from UP then I’m all for talking dogs.

[via Slash Gear]

Forget P2p, Here’S B2b: Brain-to-Brain Communication

Lambert Varias — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:20:38 +0000

We can now add telepathy to the list of things that’s possible thanks to the Internet. Researchers at the University of Southampton in the UK have demonstrated that it is possible to transmit thoughts from one person’s brain to another person’s brain using nothing but pieces of tape, a couple of EEG amplifiers, some special software, LEDs, and the Internet. So… actually quite a lot of things.

The demonstration had a sender think of either 1 or 0. For some reason the person in the video didn’t directly think of either number; he had to think of moving his left arm for 0, and his right arm for 1. I wonder why. The EEG attached to the sender amplifies his brain signals, which are sent to the receiver via the Internet. The receiver’s brain picks up the 1s and 0s via a set of LEDs that flashed a different pattern depending on the digit sent.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Obviously the demo wasn’t too practical, but if this technology is improved maybe we won’t need monitors in the future; instead data will be sent directly to our brain. Then while you’re b2beeing with your friend, you could mess with his brain and make him slap or pee on himself. Awesome.

[via FreshCreation via gizmag]

Walkie Talkie Wrist Watch

Technabob — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 14:35:45 +0000

Looks like modern technology has finally caught up with the concept of the old Dick Tracy communicator watches. These geek-chic watches claim to have a range of up to 3 kilometers. Looks like a great idea for hikers and other outdoorsy types. Want one? They’re available for 59.99 Pounds Sterling (about $110 USD) from these guys. Supposedly not available in the US (likely due to FCC regulations) [via coolbuzz]