Rolling your eyes to turn up the volume of a portable music player and tapping your fingers to turn on a DVD player are among technologies Japan’s top mobile carrier is testing for “wearable” gadgets.
In one version, sensors and chips inside headphones detect electrical current produced by movements of the wearer’s eyeballs, said Masaaki Fukumoto, executive research engineer at NTT DoCoMo. “We are working on a cell phone of the future,” he said at a suburban Tokyo research center.
NTT DoCoMo believes wearable control technology will be adapted for mobile devices that download music, play video games and allow users to shop online and keep up with their e-mail.
In a demonstration Tuesday for the Associated Press, researcher Hiroyuki Manabe wore a giant headset covered with wires to show how computer graphic lines in a monitor connected to the headset darted wildly whenever his eyes moved.
The new technology may also enable cell phone cameras to read bar codes used in Japan to get product information or download music and coupons when the user simply looks at the codes, researchers said.
Military developing smart binocs: Military binoculars may soon get information directly from the brains of the soldiers using them.
With the idea that the brain absorbs and assesses more visual information than it lets on — and that it could make more sense out of what’s visible through high-power binoculars if it didn’t filter that information — the Pentagon has awarded contracts to two defense firms to develop brainwave-aided binoculars.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, is betting that intelligent binoculars can tap into the brain’s ability to spot patterns and movement and help soldiers detect threats from miles farther away than they can with traditional binoculars.
Electrodes on the scalp inside a helmet will record the user’s brain activity as it processes information about high-resolution images produced by wide-angle military binoculars. Those responses will train the binoculars over time to recognize threats.
“You need to present the soldier with many images and then use the person’s brain to figure out what is of interest,” said Yuval Boger, chief executive of Sensics Inc., a Baltimore-based maker of panoramic head-mounted displays.
Fine-tuning learning with Zunes: Students at a rural New Mexico high school made a unique pledge: Right hands raised, they promised to take care of their Zune music players.
Almost all the roughly 100 students at Fort Sumner High School and 25 at South Valley Junior High in Liberty, Mo., were outfitted in February with the Microsoft Corp.’s take on Apple Inc.’s iPod.
The idea was that students would watch videos and listen to podcasts created or recommended by teachers and fellow students — and that would enhance their education experience. The students were encouraged to have the devices on during class hours, bus rides home and school trips. Teachers at Fort Sumner who identified 20 podcasts that supported their lessons and developed five podcasts of their own got a $400 bonus.
Associated Press
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