Researchers Create Radio Controlled Humans 262
utherdoul writes "Say goodbye to remote-controlled cars, say hello to remote-controlled people. Forbes.com (disclosure: I work there) sent a lucky reporter (further disclosure: I am jealous it was not me) to the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in Los Angeles, where NTT researchers debuted a device designed to exploit the effects of Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation. As the story explains, when a weak electrical pulse is delivered to the mastoid behind your ear, your body responds by shifting your balance towards it. If the current is strong enough, it not only throws you off balance, but alters the course of your movement. Reading about it really doesn't do it justice -- you have to check out the crazy
video of a remotely controlled woman. (Realvideo)"
Interesting application (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder if it is painless. Except for the falling over, I mean.
Re:Honey would you grab me a beer...? (Score:2, Interesting)
a) collect GPS readouts of the subject's path
b) provide way to create macros (manually navigate her from sofa to fridge, then use the system to automatically create a macro for reverse navigation fridge to sofa)
c) control your wife with few easy to use buttons
Sorry, but I am not finishing this with a "profit" list item...
Control muscles directly. (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a (crazy?) artist who has a show, where he do this. Once he danced a synchronized dance, with an industrial robot. Other times he has benne "dancing" to the response times of the internet (lag).
Now this technology has been explored to see if people can be remotely operated. This could be used to allow people in the field to operate on a patient, remotely controlled by a doctor. Now the doctor is controlling the person in the other end in the same way. Here sensors read the electrical current in his muscles as he moves his hands.
So far the sensibility to do surgery is not possible, but major movement like moving an arm or closing a hand has been successful.
Others have already mentioned the possibility of remote sex. Here your partner can control your arms and hands in the same way as you may control his or hers...
Re:If you wanted to fight it (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Interesting applications (Score:2, Interesting)
- Computers that help people avoid falling down if they, for whatever reason, have lousy balance or slow reaction. Perhaps it could help older folks for whom falling down can be a serious risk.
Doubtful. You'd have to be able to perfectly compensate for the damage in order to cancel it out. It's like applying an inverse signal to cancel it out, but you have no way of reading what the original (faulty) signal is, or what the correct signal should be. An implant that replaced the vestibular organs would be the only way. Where else could you put the artifical motion sensors?
Furthermore, balance is determined by three system: the two vestibular organs and your vision. Once vestibular distubances reach a certain level, you start experiencing visual problems. Your eyes start moving uncontrolably to try to compensate for the preceived but not real motion. Try the following:
Look directly at these words. Keep your eyes focused on this sentance and move your head slowly back and forth. Notice that you do not have to conciously move your eyes to keep them focused on this paragraph; it's completely automatic.
Vestibular disturbance screws with that process. Your brain gets signals that your head is moving when it's not, and orders the eyes to move to compensate. The result is a seemlingly endless motion in one direction, i.e, the room is spinning. In reality, your eyes are moving back and forth rapidly, but your brain can't deal with the discrepency between what your eye sees and what the vestibular regions are reporting.
I wrote all that to make an important point. There is a limit to how far this device can go. You can't scale up the signal to create a greater sensation of movement. Push it to far, and you'll experience the visual disruptions I mentioned. I strongly suspect that you can't push it far enough to make it useful for movies, games, etc., where simulating a high level of motion is desirable. You'd just end up making everyone sick.
Now I'll comment on another poster since lately I can't get slashdot to accept more than one comment for a story:
If you want to fight it, all you have to do is go limp.
It can't force you to walk anywhere, it justs makes you tip in one direction or the other, and your automatic walking reflex keeps you under your center of gravity.
Not true, at least in my experience. Going limp won't do squat except guarantee you fall. Your body will attempt to compensate whether you're walking or standing still, even if doing so throws you out of balance. Remember, it's trying to compensate for faulty data.
You're also massively underestimating how powerful vestibular disruption can be. At my worst, it didn't just tip me to one side, it threw me against the wall. It took massive effort from a very strong male nurse to hold me up and keep me from doing some real damage to myself.
This is NOT remote control (Score:5, Interesting)
The effect is good enough for video games, though -- as part of the demo they put you in front of a driving sim, and use the device to simulate the centripetal force when you go around corners. It was pretty cool.
For most people, it seemed to be painless, but after a little while my skin started to sting where the electrodes where attached.
Re:Interesting applications (Score:1, Interesting)
Consider the case where only one side is damaged, in which case you'd have the sensors only on one side. Let's say those sensors are on eyeglasses. That's a good 1-2 inches away from the vestibular organ. You've now shifted the center of your balance system to be somewhere other than where it should be. The artifical sensor will experience different forces than it would if it was inside your head. For example, if you spun around in place, the artifical sensor would experience slightly more angular momentum than the vestibular organ on the other side. Perhaps a computer could compensate for it, I don't know.
Being "off-center" is something that took a long time for me to deal with. Only one of my ears was damaged, and after the major symptoms lessened, i began noticing that my world was off. It's weird to look at , say running water in a sink and have it sound like it's 4-6 inches to the left. I know that doesn't sound like much, but it really did give me a sense of the world just being "off" a little. It's hard to put into words.
I will never again instal REAL, EVER (Score:1, Interesting)
Even being a computer newb I never trusted the company or the player and managed for 5 years to never instal or watch a REAL video. Quite happily. Then in 2000 I was bored, REALLY BORED. And thought i'd give it a shot to watch a video. After watching it Real associated itself with every file extension possible. It loaded everytime I restarted the computer. The player I did instal sucked ass and you had no control of the stopping or starting of it. I dont even remember but it just felt like I had installed a virus on my machine.
And thats why I have no desire at all to give a shit about this video. Despite my overwhelming interest in the subject.
Slashot being the flagship for the geek community should realize this and never link to anything that is REAL.
I tried it (Score:3, Interesting)
Large deviations?? (Score:2, Interesting)
GVS 2 [nih.gov]
GVS 3 [nih.gov]
(disclosure: I am Carlsen on the papers
Nope, balance Denhancer !.. (Score:3, Interesting)
In Judo, when you grab the opponent collar, this is where you put the bone on the back of your thumb to induce (more or less forcibly) a reflexive movement in the direction you wish (on beginners) or a conscient counter-pressure from intermediate fighters , so as to then accentuate the move and throw him/her/it somewhere on his back.
You get an instinctive reaction to avoid pressure on this point, so your body, in trying to protect you, is actually betraying you...
Try it with friends, for fun, don't try it on your sensei, he's gonna make you fly 8p
There are lots of pressure point used in acupuncture, massages and martial arts that have very interesting effects - healing, relaxative, dolorous or just plain deadly.
Google a bit, its quite educative 8)
Re:This is NOT remote control (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a fair amount of experience throwing off my vestibular canals and ignoring them (pilot, flew aerobatics on the competition circuit for a few years). I tried to walk in a straight line while the device was trying to have me do otherwise. It was *extremely* difficult, but not impossible.
The feeling of lateral acelleration (where none was actually present) was very convincing.
I also thought this was one of the cooler things in the emerging technologies section at siggraph.