Augmented Reality Navigation

Augmented Reality Navigation from Robert Winters on Vimeo.

Capacitive SSVEP Brain Computer Interface

Driving a model car by capacitive EEG helmet. System is based on steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP) in the visual cortex of the human brain. Technische Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina

TED Talk: Robert Full on How engineers learn from evolution

Insects and animals have evolved some amazing skills -- but, as Robert Full notes, many animals are actually over-engineered. The trick is to copy only what's necessary. He shows how human engineers can learn from animals' tricks. - TED

Video: ted.com/talks/view/id/280

Brain-computer interface

On 7th June 2008, Keio University succeeded in the world’s first demonstration experiment with the help of a disabled person to use brainwave to chat and stroll through the virtual world.

The research group led by Assistant Prof. Junichi Ushiba of the Faculty of Science and Technology of Keio University applied the technology “to operate the computer using brain images released last year and succeeds in enabling a disabled person suffering muscle disorder (41 year old male) to stroll through “Second Life®*”, a three-dimentional virtual world on the Internet, to walk towards the avatar of a student logged in at Keio University located 16km from the subject’s home, and to have a conversation with the student using the “voice chat” function.

This demonstration experiment opens a new possibility for motion-impaired people in serious conditions to communicate with others and to engage in business. This experiment is a marriage of leading-edge technologies in brain science and the Internet, and is the world’s first successful example to meet with people and have conversation in the virtual world. - Science Daily

Flicflex concept

Opening a letter, unfolding it and feeling the texture of the paper is a very tactile experience compared to receiving an e-mail. On top of the content itself, the behavior and micro-interactions adds a level of engagement to the medium. Flicflex explores the possibilities of future flexible electronic interfaces that could emerge within digital products.

By minimizing the graphical interface and embodying physical interactions such as flipping, wrenching and bending, it creates more pleasurable ways of managing information.

Microsoft's vision of different users interfaces

Thought controlled robot arm

If these monkeys were 1970s TV stars, they would play crime-fighting cyborgs in “The Six Million Dollar Monkeys.”

Macaque monkeys with electrodes implanted in their brains learned to control a robotic arm with their thoughts, researchers report.

Scientists gently restrained the monkeys’ own arms and positioned the mechanical arm at each animal’s left shoulder as if it were a real arm. After practicing for several days, the monkeys appeared to treat the robotic arm as their own and could feed themselves with the arm using fluid, rapid motions. - Science News