Wearable bats

A new trend in technology is called "wearables", i.e. embedding technology into our clothes. These can be sensors, such as temperature, cameras, etc. and it can be other things, such as monitors, screens, buttons, etc.

I propose embedding the sonar sense into clothes. This can be done by incorporating ultrasonic range sensors, which are pretty simple, cheap and light, into the clothes in many directions. While they will not compete with Google's autonomous car apparatus, they can give a general sense of range to nearby objects. Then also embed light vibration actuators in the cloth, such that it vibrates more when things are nearer.

An optimal apparatus would be a single small-scale unit that on one side senses range, and on the other has a small vibrator. The latter can be a shape-memory-alloy or a small piezo that vibrate when current pas through them. The latter can be miniature ultrasonic sensors. Then embedding many of these units seamlessly into the clothes in front and on the back.

While it may seem to be very uncomfortable to have vibrations on our skin all the time, the human body and mind is highly adaptive and it can quickly habituate to the uneasiness, while adapting a new sense like bats. It has been shown in many sensory substitution devices, that people can learn to switch or acquire new perceptions like this. The novel thing about this project is to make wearable and thereby easy to don on and off and have a large range of sensors/actuators.

Beeping cars

Cars communicate with people with only a single auditory channel, i.e. the horn. Not only is it a disturbing sound, there are also many meanings to the horn. It can signal danger, "the signal-light has turned", "I know you", "our team has won", etc. This limitation causes not only noise-pollution, but actually a dangerous situation, where people who signal "hi" with the horn cause other drives to turn their head in search of danger.

I propose expanding the auditory channels of cars. Why not have multiple buttons on the steering wheel so that each signal a different meaning: a "honk" for danger, "beep" for signal-light, "Scooby-do" for "hi, I know you". This can even start a whole chain of car ringtones. It will enrich the auditory environment and alleviate the scary stereotypical noise of a crowded city.

Obviously, there are some safety and regulation issues that must be addressed. We don't want people to start making all kind of noises all the time. But as people are now not honking all the time out of respect, fear of the law and social pressure, I believe that they will not "beep" and "Scooby-do" all of the time as well.

Augmented Vision Part I – Seeing beyond time

What happens when you take Google Street-view, Google Glass and time-lapse photography? For those few who don't know, Google Street-view is a software created by Google that captures images from many, many places in 3D format and allows people to virtually travel in other places, as if they were there. Google Glass, on the other hand, enables virtual-reality like experience, where images and information are displayed on the Glass in response to either your commands or events that are detected in the view captured by the camera on the Glass. Time-lapse photography is the art-form that captures pictures every X-second/minutes/hours and then combines them to a single video, thus allowing us to see things that happen too slow, e.g. traffic of cars over an entire day, formation of clouds, blooming of flowers.

The concept of Google Street-view is to have people from different places to experience a specific scene. The concept of Google Glass is to experience the scene they are in in different manners. The concept of time-lapse photography is to experience a specific scene in a unique perspective.

I propose the following research project. Select a place with trees, buildings and an open view of the sky and repeatedly record with Google Street-view the same place, over and over again, every minute, in a time-lapse fashion. Then create a 3D time-lapse scene of the entire place, showing the movement of the leaves, the weather formation and the buildings' dynamics. Now, enable people walking with Google Glass to view the scene from the time-lapse perspective. They can literally speed-up time and see how things around them behave in a completely new and unique fashion. Because it is captured by Street-view, the scene is completely immersive and because of the Glass the video is reactive to the view-point of the user.

If Google does not want to supply Street-view for this project, it can be done in another, automatic way using only Google Glasses, and the more Glasses the better, using the concept of Building Rome in a Day. That project took Google Images of tourists in Rome and reconstructed the entire old city of Rome in 3D, aligning all pictures and extracting the 3D information out of them. Now think of several dozens of people walking by in a specific area, wearing Google Glass and constantly recording the view they see. One can then take all of these videos and reconstruct not only the 3D scene, but actually the 4D scene, meaning also the dynamics of it. And since people pass specific places at different times, we automatically get time-lapse videos. Then, resending the same people the reconstructed videos from all other people's recorded views, will enable them to see the place they're walking in with enhance speed – seeing beyond time.

AURA - AUtomatic Research Acronymizer

A discovery, project, tool or model is measured by the coolness of its acronym. There are BRAIN, and MUSIC, STEM and ICARUS and the list goes on and on (check this out). But finding the right acronym is not that easy. A short personal story: I once worked on a quantum mechanical problem called Entanglement Sudden Death, ESD. It's a macabre name for a really cool phenomenon. However, I showed that entanglement, even after its sudden death, can be brought back to life. So I really wanted a cool acronym for it and I found the acronym ESD-CPR (which usually stands for Cardio-Respiratory Resuscitation). So I had my acronym, but I had to find what it stood for. After hours of agony I came up with Controlled Partial Resuscitation, which is actually a good description of the phenomenon.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was an automatic tool that, given the short description of the research, gives you a cool, relevant acronym? AURA - AUtomatic Research Acronymizer. The problem is obviously, NLP (Natural Language Processing), which requires to "read" the research description, "analyze" what is written and "come up" with the correct acronym. However, related tools are already out there, such as the HAHAcronym. 

I believe that combining tools such as the tool cited above (a database of known acronyms and an algorithm for generating acronyms), as well as semantic networks such as concept net, that will accommodate the network of scientific jargon, can facilitate this very important, highly influential and greatly required tool.

A completely folding bike

The trend of folding bicycles is growing, due to urbanization, high density of people inside cities and the wheel to reduce pollution (yes, it is a pun). There are many types of foldingbicycles but they all have one thing in common: the wheels are not folding. If you look at pictures of folding bikes you'd notice one of two things: either the wheel dominates the size of the folded bikes, such that you see a large circle with some bars and hinges attached to it; or the bike's wheels are very small, reduced in size exactly because of this problem.

On the other hand, wheelchairs have progressed much more due to the large demand and the subsidized market. In this unique apparatus, the concept of folding wheels is now possible, with several competitors out there. 

Why not combine the two? Why not enjoy the world of folding bikes as well as folding wheels, to reduce even further the size and complexity of the bikes to a minimum? This can be done, while still enjoying the benefits of a large wheel.

And while we're contemplating "revolutionary" ideas on folding and bikes, why not do it an automatic unfolding and folding? The idea of inserting some kind of engine into the design to supply the power for the transformation is prohibitive, since then the bike will need battery, and the complexity and weight will dramatically increase. However, there are other possibilities. One can be taken from the simple idea of a folded springy ring, that are ubiquitous in IKEA children toys. Is there a possibility to construct a formidable bike from springy materials that can then carry the weight of a person on them? 

The design of new materials is reaching a turning point where flexibility and hardness can transformed with a turn of a switch Maybe using such materials and concepts from folded wheelchair's wheels one can created a truly and wholly folded bicycle that can be carried in your purse.

Conductive tattoos

There is a new trend called "wearables", which means technology that is worn as clothes. Some sensors can now be embedded into clothes and they monitor your heart rate and skin conductance which relates to anxiety. Other wearables are buttons and displays that are sewn into clothes, and will hopefully make cellphones obsolete, i.e. everything will be in your clothes.

I want to suggest an even more radical wearable, i.e. the conductive tattoo. Recently a new form of designing electronic circuits has been introduced, namely, conductive ink. With this contraption, you can simply draw a circuit and make it work. You can draw whatever circuit you wish, augmented with some electronic devices, e.g. LED and batteries, and you simply have a working circuit.

What will happen if you make a conductive tattoo? Suddenly, your body acts as the circuit and you can connect your wearables whichever way you like. You can close a circuit by simply contorting your body, moving your hand, touching your ear, etc. More elaborate circuits require more elaborate tattoos, but hey, after Prison Break, that's probably very popular.

There are two main concerns with this project. The first is the toxicity of the conductive tattoo. While regular tattoo are also not that safe, putting in them conductive materials is probably not that healthy. One should first come up with a bio-compatible conductive ink. The second is the extra electronic that you actually need to make the circuit run, e.g. batteries. However, these can be worn on the body, e.g. wrist bands, and the rest of the tattoo closes the circuit.

I agree that this idea doesn’t make much efficiency-sense, but wouldn't it be cool to see a tattooed contortionist make a body-electrical-display?

Singing as the optimal educational medium - Part III Education

In the last two posts I have claimed that singing is an optimal medium for conveying information, both from an engineering perspective and a neuroscience perspective. I want to tie it all in with education. I believe that due to the points raised before, mainly that singing conveys the optimal combination of language (content) and melody (affect) and that our brain is wired to remember dynamical patterns apparent in singing, one can use singing to educate and teach in an optimal manner.

First I want to make a distinction between what I think can and cannot be taught with singing. Singing is optimal for teaching content-driven material, such as history lessons, as well as higher-level concepts, such as philosophy, law and basic science. However, I believe it is less adequate for teaching repetition-requiring and manual dexterity material, e.g. writing and algebra. Whenever there is knowledge to be learned, singing can form a "wrapper" for that knowledge which augment it in several ways: (i) it can imbue affect into the knowledge, which is usually lacking in dry written textbooks. For example, historical events are immersive in emotional content and singing about them can strike a chord with our emotional neuronal circuits to form more long-lasting memory of the knowledge itself. This is obviously nothing new, as ballads of fallen heroes and great events have been common in the Middle Ages as an effective medium of passing knowledge. (ii) The melody and dynamical patterns of singing can create a cohesive web of knowledge, so that events or facts are tied together via the melody. The simple a-b-c song is a great example of this fact.

As written above, these ideas are not new, but I believe they were forgotten or neglected in recent decades, as the written word has claimed priority in our educational system. I propose a project of re-introducing singing in the educational system in a more structured, scientific-based and optimal manner. This can be done by a comprehensive reformulation of the educational curriculum to the singing medium. In other words, one can take the required body of knowledge and write and compose songs about each and every "fact" in it, in such as a way so as to utilize the known (or researched) relationships between melody, emotion, memory and content to enhance memory and understanding. History lessons are a good place to start, although basic science is just as adequate.

I must stress two things. I do not suggest that singing supplants the written word, but augment it to enhance memory and enthusiasm about the material. Furthermore, several things, e.g. writing and algebra, cannot be taught in this way since they must be practiced over and over again. Nevertheless, their principles can be taught, in my opinion, via singing which will ease the pain of practice. Furthermore, I believe we can all agree that hearing songs is must nicer than reading and memorizing endless texts.

Finally, I want to share the wonder of They MightBe Giants, which I learned to love due to their passion to the topic discussed about. This shows that while optimality and research are important (and lacking) qualities in this specific field, the performing arts are just as crucial.