The 'Robocop' Headset

A headset computer promises to give police officers and other emergency services Robocop-like abilities.

The Golden-i device, similar to the Glass project being developed by Google, offers the ability to see through walls thanks to infrared technology.

It is operated by voice commands and head movements and allows the wearer to access vital information without using their hands.

Golden-i has been developed by U.S. company Kopin Corporation, but software solutions tailored to police, firefighters and paramedics have been created by Nottinghamshire-based firm Ikanos Consulting. 

It was shown off at the CES 2013 show in Las Vegas last month, although the firm says it is 'too early' to give a price.

It is set to be trialled this year, and could go on sale before Google's Glass project, which is a far more compact headset the search giant also plans to release this year.

The Police Pro application provides real-time situational awareness in the field by allowing officers to record incidents for later analysis and view live video feeds from other Golden-i headsets.

The system can also identify suspects using facial recognition, receive alerts from motion sensors, scan licence plates instantly, monitor basic vital signs and call up floor plans and GPS coordinates.

The Firefighter Pro application allows firefighters to call up floor plans and GPS coordinates, see through walls using infrared technology, monitor crew and surroundings, navigate through unknown environments and provide on-site video streaming.

They can also access medical records, stream live video, discuss options with associates and view maps or use GPS.

Office workers can also benefit from the technology with the Ikanos-created Lifeboard application. This system enables you to customise up to 6 different screens to meet personal working preferences and manage your day.

The Golden-i unit features an inertially stabilised 14-megapixel camera with optional infrared camera for thermal and night vision.

A 1080 HD detachable camera for recording or sending real-time video can also be added.

Selected Golden-i devices come pre-loaded with a set of core Gi-OS applications, including E-mail Center, Ask Ziggy, Web Browser and File Explorer. 

The Golden-i platform will continue to evolve as the developer community works together to build voice-controlled augmented reality applications for Golden-i.

The Golden-i hardware and software developer kit is expected be released by the summer, while a consumer version is slated for later in the year.

Via: "The Daily Mail"

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Anticipatory Computing

I was so intrigued when I came across a new iPad app called MindMeld that is based on the emerging science of “anticipatory computing.”

Using video and voice chat capabilities similar to Skype, MindMeld not only facilitates the discussion, but also adds pertinent photos or videos to the conversation as it interprets what is being said.

We tend to worry about computers that are smarter than we are, automating our skills and taking our jobs. But if computers become more human-like in their thinking, adding our own emotional values to everything we think is important, the heartless machine-only qualities of these technologies will disappear, moving computers away from the paradigm of human-replacer to something more akin to human-enhancer. Here’s what I see happening.

The MindMeld Approach

“We have a predictive model that changes second to second and surfaces relevant information without searching,” says Tuttle. He views this as an effective application of “anticipatory computing” because of the predictive nature of its computational decision-making.

Over time, MindMeld will accrue intelligence as it becomes better at reading and aggregating ambient data.

Capturing Real Human Intelligence

Artificial intelligence only goes so far. But finding a way to capture pieces of real human intelligence can give us far more pertinent information.

As example, if someone conducts a typical search on a search engine, the connecting path between the search terms and the final destination is a very real piece of human intelligence.

Certainly not everyone will agree on the final site selected from a set of search terms. But that will improve over time.

According to Futurist John Smart, in 1998 the average online search phrase consisted of 2 words. Today, the average search contains 5.2 words, trending towards something far longer, more akin to a natural question of 8-10 words.

Over time, capturing millions of “paths” will yield a base of growing intelligence based on the cumulative thinking of everyone involved.

Similarly, when groups of people get into a conversation, and a variety of images are displayed, a selection process where users click on applicable images to help refine the “yield,” the anticipatory computing process will get much smarter, and more relevant, over time.

Via: "The Futurist Speaker"

Beyond Touch: What’s Next For Computer Interfaces?

By Michael Keller,

“In the human-computer interaction community, the general notion we’re working under is reality-based interfaces,” says Dr. Robert Jacob, a Tufts University computer science professor studying brain-computer interfaces. “We’re trying to design what is intuitive in the real world directly into our interaction with computers.”

He says intuitive interaction is apparent with the flowering of smart devices: squeezing the thumb and pointer finger together on a touchscreen to zoom in and spreading them out to zoom out, along with various augmented reality apps.

But such newfound intuitive functionality, amazing as it is, is just the beginning of what’s possible, says Chris Harrison, a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute.

“Imagine if the only thing you could use in the real world to operate things were a touch or a swipe,” says Harrison. “The world would be completely unusable. We knock. We scratch. We rub. We open bottles and we move things around. How do we bring that type of richness to the interface?”

Harrison’s work focuses on extending mobile interaction and input technologies. He worked on a project called TapSense, which allows a touchscreen to recognize the difference between a user’s knuckle, fingertip, pad and nail, and to use each type of contact to perform a different function.

“The next obvious thing that we’ll see with human-computer interaction is a move beyond multitouch,” Harrison says. “We won’t come to terms with the small space to use on phones and we’ll move to projectors.”

His idea is to break free from the constraints of the display screen altogether. He’s been busy turning such an idea into reality with a project called OmniTouch, which is a portable device that projects interactive graphics out onto a wall, table or the user’s body. The projection is meant to serve as an extension of a multitouch smart device.

Several products available or under development from others also demonstrate that using a finger or two to touch a tiny mobile screen isn’t the pinnacle of human input technology. They show that a fuller use of hand gesturing, a jump away from physical contact with the computer and employment of the space around a user are definitively in the offing for the next generation of human-computer interaction.

One information visualization company, Oblong, has developed what it calls a spatial operating environment, which fans of Minority Report should recognize.

Another, Leap Motion, has created a $70 device that interprets a user’s gestures within an eight-cubic-foot space, allowing the person’s movements to interact with the computer without touching it.

And researchers are working on different ways to glean input data, from Microsoft Kinect’s infrared laser depth finder and audio recognition software to a research project called SoundWave, which generates inaudible tones and uses the Doppler effect to sense gestures.

But not all of the work to make interactions with computers easier involves intentional actions or body movements. In fact, Jacob’s research at Tufts University is seeking to create interaction with a computer without the user knowing it.

His research focuses on lowering the cognitive demand of interacting with computers. His team is measuring blood flow changes in the brain to detect when a computer user is overloaded with work.

“When the brain does something hard, it sends out a request to the body that says, “Hey, I need more blood up here,’” Jacob says. “We shine a light into a person’s head and a sensor measures how much comes back out. That data can be used as real-time input to direct a person’s interaction with a computer.”

He says a computer can use the information from this technique, called functional near infrared spectroscopy, to adapt the user’s interface and manage workload. Imagine this: A pilot is given a fleet of five unmanned aerial vehicles to fly at once. Using the device, called Brainput, and a “heavy dose of machine learning,” he says, the computer would be able to understand when the pilot is working too hard to fly the fleet and transfer control of one or two of the vehicles to another person automatically. While the pilot is doing something less demanding, like flying the UAVs in a straight line to a destination, he could operate more of them.

“We’re coming at it as human interaction designers and asking how can you make a good interface without actively inputting data into the computer,” Jacobs says.

While human-computer interaction is still in its early stages, there are several input technologies that are developing—hand and body gesturing, natural language parsing, eye movement tracking and machine learning to give devices context awareness.

Carnegie Mellon’s Harrison sees the development of these technologies as complementary and, ultimately, synergistic.

“Pulling all this rich sensing and input together, it’ll sort of feel like AI [artificial intelligence],” he says. “There are a lot of pieces that need to come together, but it will be here in our lifetime.”

Top Image: An interface projected onto the user’s hand by OmniTouch, a novel wearable system that enables graphical, interactive, multitouch input on arbitrary, everyday surfaces. Photo courtesy Chris Harrison.

Via: "TxchNologist"