Positive Technology Journal

Via VRoot

(From Virtual Worldlets)

Virtual Reality is just beginning to head down the full body sensation reproduction path. We are at the very early stages of being able to recreate parts of the physical form, entirely in the virtual. This is a concept which is likely to have very a profound effect upon how we deal with the world around us.

At the moment, VR technology in reproducing virtual limbs is limited to a single limb at a time. This is done by mimicking the movements of the user's physical limb by reading the signals sent down the brainstem, translating and implementing them, as opposed to monitoring the movement of the arm and duplicating that. This is both faster than mimicking the movement observationally, and also allows the technique to work if the user has no physical arm to mimic, so long as the brain is capable of controlling one - e.g., quadriplegics, limb amputees.

Via Usability News

Deadine: 15 May 2006

Via Videogame Workout

New Scientist reports about a new Kung-fu computer game that allows the user to deliver real kicks:

Via Smart Mobs

The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (Japan), Ymatic Ltd., and Biometrica Systems Asia Co. Ltd. have jointly developed a novel automated home. The home combines robots guided by IC tags, a biometric face authentication system, and a wireless network.

Source: Physorg 

Via Textually.org

Motorola has patented a new phone technology adaptable for the hearing impaired.

"By automatically detecting speech patterns of the elderly, the technology automatically boosts incoming and outgoing audio while simplifying menu structure and increasing font size.

The special needs of the elderly can often be in conflict with other users, such as the youth which often desire the smallest, most feature rich devices possible. Hence, the technology allows one device to adapt and accommodate to both market segments."

Telecommunication devices that adjust audio characteristics for elderly communicators - United States Patent Application 20060088154

Virtual reality immersion method of distraction to control experimental ischemic pain.

Isr Med Assoc J. 2006 Apr;8(4):261-5

Authors: Magora F, Cohen S, Shochina M, Dayan E

BACKGROUND: Virtual reality immersion has been advocated as a new effective adjunct to drugs for pain control. The attenuation of pain perception and unpleasantness has been attributed to the patient's attention being diverted from the real, external environment through immersion in a virtual environment transmitted by an interactive 3-D software computer program via a VR helmet. OBJECTIVES: To investigate whether VR immersion can extend the amount of time subjects can tolerate ischemic tourniquet pain. METHODS: The study group comprised 20 healthy adult volunteers. The pain was induced by an inflated blood pressure cuff during two separate, counterbalanced, randomized experimental conditions for each subject: one with VR and the control without VR exposure. The VR equipment consisted of a standard computer, a lightweight helmet and an interactive software game. RESULTS: Tolerance time to ischemia was significantly longer for VR conditions than for those without (P < 0.001). Visual Analogue Scale (0-10) ratings were recorded for pain intensity, pain unpleasantness, and the time spent thinking about pain. Affective distress ratings of unpleasantness and of time spent thinking about pain were significantly lower during VR as compared with the control condition (P< 0.003 and 0.001 respectively). CONCLUSIONS: The VR method in pain control was shown to be beneficial. The relatively inexpensive equipment will facilitate the use of VR immersion in clinical situations. Future research is necessary to establish the optimal selection of clinical patients appropriate for VR pain therapy and the type of software required according to age, gender, personality, and cultural factors.

Is there "feedback" during visual imagery? Evidence from a specificity of practice paradigm.

Can J Exp Psychol. 2006 Mar;60(1):24-32

Authors: Krigolson O, Van Gyn G, Tremblay L, Heath M

Nicholas Nova quotes an interview of Dharmendra Modha, chair of the Almaden Institute at IBM’s San Jose and IBM’s leader for cognitive computing, who claims a language shift from the previsouly so-called “Artifical Intelligence” to “Cognitive Computing”:

Q: Why use the term “cognitive computing” rather than the better-known “artificial intelligence”?

A: The rough idea is to use the brain as a metaphor for the computer. The mind is a collection of cognitive processes—perception, language, memory, and eventually intelligence and consciousness. The mind arises from the brain. The brain is a machine—it’s biological hardware.

Cognitive computing is less about engineering the mind than it is the reverse engineering of the brain. We’d like to get close to the algorithm that the human brain [itself has]. If a program is not biologically feasible, it’s not consistent with the brain.

Via Networked Performance 

Lisbon, Portugal, 15 - 19 May 06, Espaço Atmosferas, Rua da Boavista, 67, Lisbon.

From the conference's website 

The mobile phone has reached a level of adoption that far exceeds that of the personal computer. As a result, they are an emerging platform for new services and applications that have the potential to change the way we live and communicate.

Mobile Processing is an open source project that aims to drive this innovation by increasing the audience of potential designers and developers through a free, open source prototyping tool based on Processing and the open sharing of ideas and information. This workshop will introduce the Mobile Processing project and prototyping tool and provide hands-on instruction and experience with programming custom applications for the mobile phone.

Contents:

- Introduction to Mobile Processing, phone hardware and development platforms.
- Survey of projects with the phone as both the platform and subject for new forms of interactive applications and electronic art.
- Basic programming and prototyping concepts with 2D graphics and animation.
- Phone input/output handling including keyboard, camera, sound and vibration.
- Internet networking. Parsing and generating XML-formatted data.
- Text messaging and Bluetooth networking.

The workshop will be practical and at the end every participant will develop a personal exercise.

Equipment

Windows highly recommended, but Mac OS X is acceptable, with built-in or USB Bluetooth adapters recommended. Mobile phones with support for Java and Bluetooth recommended.

Participants are encouraged to bring their laptops.

Schedule

20 hours: 5 sessions X 4 h
15 to 19 of May 06 - 18h-22h

Target

Basic programming skills, familiarity with Processing recommended but not required.

Via Networked Performance 

RAP (Robotic Action Painter) is a new generation of painting robots designed for Museum or long exhibition displays. It is completely autonomous and need very little assistance and maintenance. RAP creates it's own paintings based on an artificial intelligence algorithm, it decides when the work is ready and signs in the right bottom corner with its distinctive signature. The algorithm combines initial randomness, positive feedback and a positive/negative increment of 'color as pheromone' mechanism based on a grid of nine RGB sensors. Also the 'sense of rightness' - to determine when the painting is ready - is achieved not by any linear method, time or sum, but through a kind of pattern recognition system.

Via Medgadget 

The US company Northstar Neuroscience is developing an implantable device system intended to enhance neuroplasticity and recovery of function in patients status post stroke.

From the company's website:

Following a stroke, the only proven treatment currently available for patients with hemiparesis (motor deficits) or aphasia (speech deficits) is rehabilitative therapy. Unfortunately, many patients do not achieve satisfactory functional improvement from rehabilitative therapy. There is considerable evidence that the brain can undergo significant repair and recovery after an injury such as a stroke by a process termed neuroplasticity.

As reported in numerous scientific publications, neuroplasticity involves the recruitment of existing alternative neural pathways and the development of new synaptic connections, i.e., reorganization of the brain circuitry. Within hours after a stroke, the brain will begin to recruit existing alternative neural pathways in an attempt to meet functional demands. Over time and with use, there is an increase in the density of connections between the neurons that comprise these neural pathways. However, natural gains in motor recovery and speech generally plateau within several months after a stroke, with many stroke survivors achieving only minimal recovery of function...

Together, we have demonstrated that cortical stimulation of the healthy brain tissue adjacent to the "stroke," in combination with rehabilitation, enhances motor recovery and suggests that cortical stimulation for stroke patients may facilitate neuroplasticity...

The Northstar Stroke Recovery System is comprised of the following components:

-- Implantable pulse generator (IPG) - an electrical stimulator that is implanted in the pectoral (upper chest) area.

-- Cortical stimulation lead - an electrode connected to the IPG, which is used to deliver stimulation to the cortex. The electrode is placed on top of the dura, which is the membrane that covers the brain's surface.

-- Programming system - a handheld computer attached to a programming device which allows communication with the implanted IPG device. This system allows the clinician to turn the device on/off and to set/modify stimulation parameters

Via Emerging Technology Trends

The new personal video display device developed by the Israeli company Mirage Innovations Ltd looks like a simple pair of glasses. According to the company, the technology

One of the most interesting feature of the new display is that it eliminates the dizziness phenomenon usually associated with this kind of display. The product is not currently on the market.

Via the Presence Mailing List

(From The Acadiana)

Virtual reality is commonly the stuff of science fiction — but the real-world applications made possible by using computer simulations inside a virtual reality environment are as tangible as diapers and oil wells.

The soon-to-open Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise will make any number of research and business applications possible, said Carolina Cruz-Neira, the newly hired chief scientist at LITE.

Cruz-Neira gave an overview of LITE on Thursday at the TechSouth technology summit.

At the heart of LITE is a supercomputer and 6-sided (hexagonal) visual immersion cave. The supercomputer can process and simulate an enormous amount of data, then project that visual data onto the screens of the cave, which serves as a virtual reality environment that allows researchers to better understand that data...

Read the full article 

Via CNN

Continue to read the full article 

Cardiac responses induced during thought-based control of a virtual environment.

Int J Psychophysiol. 2006 Apr 25;

Authors: Pfurtscheller G, Leeb R, Slater M

Cardiac responses induced by motor imagery were investigated in 3 subjects in a series of experiments with a synchronous (cue-based) Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). The cue specified right hand vs. leg/foot motor imagery. After a number of BCI training sessions reaching a classification accuracy of at least 80%, the BCI experiments were carried out in an immersive virtual environment (VE), commonly referred as a "CAVE". In this VE, the subjects were able to move along a virtual street by motor imagery alone. The thought-based control of VE resulted in an acceleration of the heart rate in 2 subjects and a heart rate deceleration in the other subject. In control experiments in front of a PC, all 3 subjects displayed a significant heart rate deceleration of the order of about 3-5%. This heart rate decrease during motor imagery in a normal environment is similar to that observed during preparation for a voluntary movement. The heart rate acceleration in the VE is interpreted as effect of an increased mental effort to walk as far as possible in VE.

Steady-state somatosensory evoked potentials: suitable brain signals for brain-computer interfaces?

IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2006 Mar;14(1):30-7

Authors: Müller-Putz GR, Scherer R, Neuper C, Pfurtscheller G

One of the main issues in designing a brain-computer interface (BCI) is to find brain patterns, which could easily be detected. One of these pattern is the steady-state evoked potential (SSEP). SSEPs induced through the visual sense have already been used for brain-computer communication. In this work, a BCI system is introduced based on steady-state somatosensory evoked potentials (SSSEPs). Transducers have been used for the stimulation of both index fingers using tactile stimulation in the "resonance"-like frequency range of the somatosensory system. Four subjects participated in the experiments and were trained to modulate induced SSSEPs. Two of them learned to modify the patterns in order to set up a BCI with an accuracy of between 70% and 80%. Results presented in this work give evidence that it is possible to set up a BCI which is based on SSSEPs.

Via Kurzweilai.net

Researchers have shown that subliminal advertising may work after all..

New Scientist: It was a stunt that launched a thousand conspiracy theories. Market researcher James Vicary claimed in 1957 that he could get movie-goers to "drink Coca-Cola" and "eat popcorn" by flashing those messages on the screen for such a short time that viewers were unaware of it. People were outraged, and the practice was banned in the UK, Australia and the US.

Vicary later admitted that his study was fabricated, and scientists through the years who have tried to replicate it have largely failed. But now researchers have shown that if the conditions are right, subliminal advertising to promote a brand can be made to work.

 

Read the full article

(Via VRoot)

This video shows people playing pong with thought, just by thinking of moving square.

Via Networked Performance

(Bill Hanley, Rhizome News)

Marseilles-based artist Mathieu Briand makes installations that use light, video, sound, and other media to let viewers destabilize and manipulate their own perceptions. His stylish works adopt the sleek, cold, and ambiguously menacing look of '2001: A Space Odyssey' and other dystopian science fiction fables of that era. Briand's first U.S. solo show recently opened at Los Angeles' Redcat gallery, and its title, Ubiq: A Mental Odyssey references both the Kubrick film and 'Ubik,' the Philip K. Dick classic about telepathy, unstable realities, and an elusive cure-all product. On view through June 18, the exhibition includes a standout work consisting of four retro-futuristic helmets outfitted with cameras and monitors, which allow wearers to swap perspectives and steal each other's points of view as they explore the exhibition. The piece highlights an important difference between Briand's work and the bleak science fiction tradition that he references: his work makes a hallucinatory future of failed technological utopias seem like fun. In these playful installations, a Phillip K. Dick-style confusion between reality and fractured perceptions becomes the perfect context for anarchic play. - 

From the BabyBot project website:

The Babybot is the LIRA-Lab humanoid robot. The latest version has eighteen degrees of freedom distributed along the head, arm, torso, and hand. The head and hand were custom designed at the lab. The arm is an off-the-shelf small PUMA manipulator and it is mounted on a rotating torso. The Babybot's sensory system is composed of a pair of cameras with space-variant resolution, two microphones each mounted inside an external ear, a set of three gyroscopes mimicking the human vestibular system, positional encoders at each joint, a torque/forse sensor at the wrist and tactile sensors at the fingertips and the palm.

The one you see in the picture above is the latest realization of the Babybot, a project started in 1996 at LIRA-Lab. The hardware itself went through many revisions so there's not much remaining of the mechanics of the first Babybot beside the PUMA arm.

Our scientific goal is that of uncovering the mechanisms of the functioning of the brain by building physical models of the neural control and cognitive structures. In our intendment physical model are embodied artificial systems that freely interact in a not too unconstrained environment. Also, our approach derives from studies of human sensorimotor and cognitive development with the aim of investigating if a developmental approach to building intelligent systems may offer new insight on aspects of human behavior and new tools for the implementation of complex, artificial systems.

Examples of the behaviors we implemented include (but not only) the control of eye movements such as vergence, saccades, and vestibulo-ocular reflex. We've been working on the integration of different sensory modalities as for example vestibular and visual cues, or acoustic perception with vision. We implemented reaching behavior as a means to physically interact with the external environment to discover about the properties of objects.