RPG Management Science

Role-playing games (RPG) are “resource-limited problem solving games”, where the players assume the role of other characters and solve (usually fantastic) problems. While RPG are often associated with Dungeons & Dragons and the likes, beside the combat intensive part of it, they really involve social, ethical and moral dilemmas that shape the characters’ personality as well as their social surrounding. Just like real life.

And like real businesses. Often managers deal with social, ethical and moral dilemmas without any prior training or practicing. These are usually trying times and can greatly influence the business as well as the manager herself. Why not use RPG as a source of (fun) training for managers?

I do not mean a “simulated” situation, but actually creating a (preferably hidden) one-to-one connection between a real-life business scenario and a fantastic one, involving wizards (=engineers), clerics (=other religions), elves and dwarves (=minorities) and dragons (=VCs). This mapping can be specific for a unique business or more general for managerial conflicts and problems that are common to many businesses. Managers can then play this game and either be tested on their abilities or trained over and over in different scenarios, guided by the Dungeon Master (=coach, CEO).

While not all managers (probably a small minority, to be truthful) are inclined to fantasy games, similar situations can be accustomed to other fictional scenarios, e.g. Science-fiction, historic, other-geography, such that the people playing the game will feel comfortable.

Another unique aspect to this suggestion is to have the business group, e.g. team, department, play together and either assume their correct roles, i.e. manager=leader, engineer=wizard, etc. or even better, switch roles and thus better understand the dilemmas and problems each other have in their own unique role. The psychological disconnection between the real life and the RPG can help people loosen-up and have a common experience that is related to their work, but only in a hidden way. In future business situations, a team member can then say: “I’m off to battle the Red Dragon”, and the rest of the team will wish her good luck with the VC, creating a unique and a more playful atmosphere in the business world.

Go on, businessmen, have some fun!

Transformative cubism

To continue the idea behind 3D cubism, one can also insert new geometrical transformations into the mix. If you draw a picture where the x/y coordinates are transformed to polar coordinates, a weird shape will appear. Why not do it in three dimensions? Take a 3D object and convert each point from x/y/z to spherical coordinates. For example, the x-axis can be radius, y-axis longitude and z-axis latitude. Then 3D print it and let people guess what it is.

Combining 3D cubism with Transformative cubism is the ultimate! Convert time into angle and see what happens. This is a whole new kid of art, but a mathematical one. Can it grant us a deeper understanding of physical space-time? Black holes? Non-Euclidean spaces?

Having these types of objects in real life, i.e. 3d printed objects that represent a transformative 4d videos, can raise also neuroscience-type questions. Can we learn how to “unfold” these structures in our mind, i.e. look at a transformed object and “know” what it is? Can we learn how to “fold” them in our mind, i.e. given a known object and a weird transformation, can we imagine how this object look like? It is easily testable by printing the object out.

Can’t believe Cubism rocks! 

Specific, targeted Ig-coated cancer treatment

The problem with cancer cells are that they are embedded in healthy tissue. The goal is to target only the cancerous cells and leave the healthy tissue intact. The key is that the cancerous cells are different from the healthy surrounding, but we don’t know how they are different.

The project I suggest is to develop a specialized system that identifies the distinguishing factors of a specific cancer from its surrounding. This falls under the new emerging field of personalized medicine. It involves the combination of the following things: biopsy, generation of Ig (immunoglobulins) with GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein), Ig-coated drug delivery system.

Let’s start with the easiest part. The system requires a biopsy from the target cancer to be eliminated. However, the system also requires biopsy from the surrounding healthy tissue. If you also get to have other biopsies of other healthy tissues of the person, even better.

The next stage is tricky, but already doable today. Ig are small molecules from our immune system. They can attach to different targets on cells, called antigens. There are practically an infinite variety of Ig, since they are composed from a combination of 15-22 amino-acids. This is how the immune system “learns” to detect foreign and harmful things.

I propose to have a “bank” of Ig-GFP, where the latter is a protein that emits green fluorescent light. The goal is to immerse the cancerous cell with each of these tagged Ig-GFP and get a “reading” of how much binding there has been. By running a bank of these Ig-GFP, one can get an “Ig-fingerprint” of that specific cell.

However, this is not enough. The point is to also immerse the surrounding healthy tissue sample with the same bank, with the goal of finding the best distinguishing combination of Ig that maximizes the binding to the cancerous cells and minimizes the binding to the healthy tissue. If you really want to go crazy, you can make it an adaptive optimization process by which one generates an adaptation mechanism on the Ig binding site to maximize specificity.

Once we found the best combination that binds specifically only to the cancerous cell, one needs to use this information to kill it in the body. There are already several mechanisms of targeted drug delivery. One of them is through micelles, which are large round membranes that contain the drug. If one can thus coat these delivery systems with the Ig-combination we found, these will only attach to the cancerous cells, and not to the surrounding healthy tissue. Combining binding with drug-release completes the job.

This may sound like a very hard thing to do, but the benefits are enormous. Targeted, minimal side-effects cancer therapy that can work on almost any type of cancer

Sims for Parents

There are many simulators of life, e.g. SimCity and Sims are the ones that most come to mind. Their point is to simulate real life with all its intricacies as much as possible, making decision making, planning, gathering information and similar cognitive tasks the goal of the game, thus teaching players how to “do it right”.

Why not Sim for Parents? In this I mean a simulator for taking care of babies, infants and children. While obviously there is no one “right” way to do it, most parents come totally unprepared for the task. There are obviously “courses” to teach young parents, but in this technological age, why not use the same technology young parents use in their daily lives to teach them about what’s coming?

I propose to develop a game that “runs” a child’s life at its core, from the very first childbirth, through diapers, crying, sleep (or lack thereof), feeding, etc. While obviously, some of the problems are physical, e.g. lack of sleep and breastfeeding, one can come to terms with it via the avatar. For example, integrating this into a Sim environment, the avatar can experience sleep deprivation akin to parents’ and therefore cope with stress in a totally different way. One must also make many joint decisions with the spouse, even more so with children than any other endeavor in their lives. While negotiating and discussing it prior to the child's arrival is often the case, the “real deal” is often a whole different ball game.

I suggest that the game be played by both parents, simultaneously, to practice joint decision making and taking care of the child. This can give parents an invaluable gift that life does not give: several attempts at the same thing, i.e. the parents-to-be can try different approaches in the simulator and see what happens, if they like it, accept it, change it.

Obviously, the AI of the game is problematic, since there are many different theories, practices and approaches to how children develop. To complicate things more, the only agreement among practitioners is that each child is different. However, this can still be simulated in the game. For example, the parents, in order to win, must “raise” several children, each one with a different attitude. The parents thus need to practice both recognizing their Sim-child temperament, as well as how to deal with it.

One can insert a lot of scientific knowledge about child development at different ages, together with common problems that parents have to deal with, e.g. gasses, fever, etc.

The game should also be connected to experts in the field, i.e. players who really want to learn more should be able to connect to practitioners either in their local environment or via web to international experts. Furthermore, as in any game in our age, this can be a social game, in the sense that players can chat and collaborate in tips and attitudes, very similar to the real life.

To conclude, I believe there is enough knowledge and technology to create a realistic simulation of child development and parents’ influence on it. Many theories can be incorporated into the game, as well as many children’s temperaments. This can be an invaluable asset to parents-to-be in encountering problems before they happen in a realistic way.

Molecular copy machine

Today there are ways to measure the 3D surface of molecular and atomic structures, e.g. atomic force microscopy (AFM) that scans a surface and based on the force exerted on its tip, it can reconstruct the structure of the surface. The same AFM can also induce force, or through running current through it, bleach or modify a surface of specific materials.

I suggest connecting two such AFMs, where one is the reader and one is the writer for a molecular copy machine. One scans a surface and immediately transfer the 3D information to another one, which bleaches or changes the surface underneath it with the same pattern.

An ever more amazing goal, although I’m not sure it is feasible today, is to copy the actual 3D structure, i.e. not modifying the surface, but adding to it the appropriate number of atoms so as to achieve the same 3D surface. Probably a better way to go about it is to etch the negative of the scanned surface onto a new one.

Can this be made digitally, in the sense of high fidelity copying? If so, that can be a revolutionary way of storing data, art and communication, in the 3D surface of atomic structure.

Augmented Vision Part II – Feeling air

Today there are intricate models of air-flow, even in urban areas. Furthermore, based on the current weather measurements, there are extremely detailed pressure, humidity and temperature information of almost every place on earth. Wouldn’t it be great to actually see and experience them un-filtered?

I suggest to have an augmented reality device, e.g. Google Glass, that can present the current atmospheric situation at the place you are now. Seeing the actual air-flows, humidity and pressure variations, temperature gradients. This information can instantly connect a person to the surrounding environment.

It can also help scientists and researcher understand their models of air-flow. By combining the augmented reality not to models, but rather to in-place sensors, one can “go around and measure the flow of air with one’s own eyes”. That can be a unique experience and I propose one that can introduce new appreciation and sensation of the environment and its intricacies.

Another option to augment vision is with another sense, for example tactile information. There was a recent work where computational vision increased the sensitivity of movements, ones so minute that could not be seen by the naked eye. One can do this with air-flows, in the same context of walking and seeing air-flows, one can combine a wearable bat (see my previous post), such that detection of minute air-flows and winds are increased and are felt via wearable vibrators on the cloth. This can create a fully immersive experience: seeing air and feeling its flow.

3D letter based toys

Inspired by WordWorld where words come alive, the basic concept is that words create the thing that they represent. Thus a dog is created and shaped by the letters D-O-G. Every object in that world is made up, literally, from the letters that name it.

I propose designing such toys that are made up of the letters that make them. Thus, for example, a car will be made up of the letters C-A-R. The challenge here is two-fold: (i) designing toys from the letters, which is relatively easy and (ii) designing the letters to fit several toys. Thus, for example, C should be part of both C-A-T and C-A-R, yet still have a single shape for both.

Hence, I propose an automatic designing algorithm that receives a list of 3D-models of toys, or at-least their 3D-silhouettes, and the letters that make them up. The output of the algorithm is a 3D design of the letters and their attachment, such that one can create the toys simply be attaching the letters together.

The real challenge will be when presented with many toys, such that each letter appears at least twice or thrice. Then a single design of the letter should be the output of the algorithm, such that all the toys can be made. This is a truly constrained problem that should prove to be a challenge to 3D-designers. The reward would be cool educational toys that can be 3D printed by everybody. Good luck.

DIY motorized home

There’s a new trend in the world, called “Internet of Everything”, which, briefly stating, means that everything will be connected to the internet, from your devices, to your refrigerator, car, home, everything. This is a cool idea but I think something is fundamentally missing from that concept and that is action, motorized action. In other words, while everything will be known or perceived and shared via the internet, nothing will actually happen in the real world, since there are no motors involved.

There are attempts to create a fully automatized houses, where everything that can move is motorized, e.g. doors, drawers, maybe even chairs. These are extremely expensive attempts and are implemented in specific, research-oriented houses.

I propose to create a Do-It-Yourself motorized home, by designing a motor-box that can be applied to anything that can move in the house, e.g. cabin doors, front doors, drawers, etc. The box will contain the following components: (i) a motor; (ii) a hinge-based driving system; (iii) a circuit-board with the motor controller and a wi-fi board to connect to a local network; (iv) an easy-to-remove battery pack. The whole box should be relatively small, to fit inside drawers and such.

When a box is installed inside a drawer, the hinge-based driving system is connected to the moving part and the box to the fixed part. With a local ip-address that transmits and receives the current position of the motor, one can control the motor. The removable battery pack is set to make it easily installable and replaced.

Consider a house filled with these types of boxes, wherein all the doors, drawers and other movable objects can be totally controlled from afar, either via your smartphone or even from your office. For handicapped people that could make all the difference and for healthy people that could simply make life easier and cooler.

3D cubism

One interpretation of cubism art is the projection of three-dimensional objects on a two dimensional canvas in an abstract way. Nowadays, we have 3D scanners and 3D printers that can render 3D objects in extremely precise ways. The abstractness is no longer needed.

However, there is another dimension, now, isn’t it? What about time? I propose combining 3D technology with video such that one films an object in time, i.e. create a video and then 3D-print it, where the 3^rd dimension is time, not the physical 3^rd dimension. Thus, the produced object now completely depends on the camera point of view and not merely on the object itself. Many kinds of objects can be created, from a rotating view, a distancing view, or a hand-held free-form view.

To create truly cubistic 3D abstract art, one can take snapshots of the same object from different angles, and thus create a virtual movie of that object. The 3D-printed construct will have abstract shape at its z-dimension, composed of the different angles of the real 3D object.

Then, just as old-fashioned 2D-cubism, the observer is left puzzled at what the actual object is.

Evolving the infinite game

The “Infinite Game” is a game whose purpose is to never end. In other words, a successful game is one that does not end and if it does, you lose. It was brought up in the context of evolution and technology. Furthermore, the concept brings about not just that the game does not end, but that the game increases in diversity, complexity and specialization, just like evolution and technology. In other words, the game’s purpose is to have more of it on any “complexity”-dimension.

Another ingenious idea, by Schmidhuber, is the concept of evolving the rules of the game such that it will be enjoyable. The novelty here is the definition of what is an enjoyable game. According to Schmidhuber’s theory of fun, an enjoyable game is one that is learnable, i.e. that it is hard to learn but feasible to learn. He then evolves the rules of the game such that learnability is increased, as measured by how long it takes for a simulated player (a neural network) to learn the game.

Let us combine the two ideas. Now we want to evolve a game whose purpose is to never end, and yet for it to be enjoyable. This means that the rules must not only evolve but also change with time, otherwise it will not be an “infinite game”. Hence, the evolution will have to take care of comparing the rate of learnability, i.e. how fast can one learn the rules and understand the game in order to advance, and the rate of rules’ change, i.e. how fast do the rules change such that a good player becomes not so good again.

This concept of evolving a game to be both fun and never ending leaves out an obvious concept of games: actual winning. Here, as in Schmidhuber idea, the game can end and can be “won”. But now, the game’s desire, not the player’s, is for it to not end. There is thus a balance between the player’s goal of ending the game and winning and the game’s goal to continue and challenge the player.

If evolved correctly, this can result in a rule for how rules change. In a more complex setting, this rule can be related to the progress of the player, her learnability and her adaptation to the very rule that changes the game. Yep, this is a circular thing that can go into your head, but create super cool games!

Close-loop body

A combination of new emerging fields may enable the opportunity to "close-the-loop" on our own body. The first is "personalized medicine", which promises to tailor each person the specific medication she requires based on a full analysis of her genome, epigenome, proteome and other –omes. The basic tenet of this new and exciting field is that by knowing each person's genetic and protein make-up, we can better design a medicinal treatment for each illness.

The second field is "self-monitoring", which at its extreme results in taking a blood sample each day and completely analyzing its cellular and molecular content. In an ambitious self-experiment, a researcher (forgot his name) did that on himself for several weeks. One finding, for example, was that these measurements indicated a flu he had much earlier than any other symptom he felt. Furthermore, the decrease of prices for such tests, following Moore's law, can results in each person being able to administer such measurements on a daily basis.

Finally, the field of "specialized consumption" (I made this name up) claims that one can drink a single fluid that contains the entire bodily requirements of the human body. No other food sources are needed to survive and thrive. These liquids, while being probably not that tasty and expensive, enable a much tighter control over what goes into our body.

Combining these three fields I suggest an experiment to try and close-the-loop on a human body. By this I mean that a person consumes only the aforementioned liquid, thus fully controlling the input to the body, while at the same time having a complete monitoring of the body functions, via the aforementioned measurements. Closing-the-loop here means changing the contents of the input liquid based on the results of the measurements in an attempt to reach some kind of equilibrium.

Obviously this is not an easy experiment, but it is not dangerous or harmful in any way. The results would also obviously be different for each person, but by closing-the-loop one may attempt to "conform" the body function.

If this experiment works, it means a whole new level of human existence, in the sense that one can have a full, and rather straight-forward control over one's own bodily functions.

Objective news assessment

News come in all forms and shapes. While most filter them according to content and subjective assessment of interest, why not try and introduce some objective measures of each news item? I propose several relative easy and simple to implement criteria of assessment by which news can be categorized and then filtered or segmented.

The first is the number of people it reports on. While this seems like a crude measure of importance, a news item related to one person that got rehabilitated (no matter who that person is) objectively is less important than famine influencing several million people. By tagging each news item on the number of people reported on (or a rough estimate thereof), one can slice news to people-importance.

The second is monetary. The cost of the item reported, either in tax-payer money or cost of reconstruction, cost of change, influence on GDP, etc. This gives a rough estimate on the financial effect of the news item. Mind you that not only financial news should be assessed by this measure, but rather every news item. Thus every natural disaster or car accident, every joyous event or festival should be tagged with a monetary measure, such that the influence of the reported item on finance can be immediately filtered.

The third is the political hierarchical level of the news item. By this I mean how up does the news item reach? Obviously, presidential reports are pretty way up, but senators, mayors and even local news can be rated according to objective measures of hierarchy, e.g. how many people between the reported people involved  and the president. This way one can assess the political influence the news item has.

One can introduce other important objective measures of news items, e.g. technological measures, social measures etc. This way, one can filter, select, evaluate and relate to news items not only based on content, but actual measures of influence. This way news media can be assessed on the importance of their items. Obviously, this is not intended to replace the content filters but rather augment them. It would be nice to see how much prime-time news are actually about important things.

Anticipatory headlights

When you drive in the dark, every little help to navigate in the black surrounding is most appreciated. Obviously, headlights are your prime tool. However, when you take a turn, even without any obstructions, in the dark you have no idea where you're driving to. This is from a simple reason that the headlights light in front of the car, whereas you're looking sideways, to where you are going to be.

Research of rodents can shed light on this kind of problem. It was shown that rats, who use their whiskers (their long facial hairs) to feel their surrounding in the dark, actually sweep the whiskers in the direction they are going to be, and not only where they are at. When they start to move their heads to the left, the left whiskers spread more and whisk more in anticipation of detection of obstacles for where their head is going to be.

Why not learn from rats' whiskers to cars' headlights? I suggest that when you either use your signal lights, or start to turn the steering wheel, a mechanism will shift the headlights to where you are going to be, and not just in front of the car. This way, the driver will be able to see what's coming ahead and not just bump into it. Hopefully, this kind of contraption can also save lives in the dark.

Automatically adjusted tires

It always fascinated me how there are two completely opposite types of movement on the ground: skating/sliding and wheels. The former requires no friction while the latter requires maximum friction. In the latter, tires are designed to have maximal friction with the road to get a better grip and reduce the sliding that may occur and cause loss of control over the car. However, tires are fixed while the road may change. There are different types of tires, if you know which road you're going to be driving on. I'm not talking about snow or ice, but rather on different types of roads like asphalt, dirt, concrete. The tires could be optimized for each one but not for all of them.

Nowadays there are materials that can change their shape and other mechanical properties very rapidly, usually through electrical current, such as shape memory alloys. I propose embedding these materials into tires and making them automatically adjustable to the road driven. One example on how to do that is to control the grooves on the tires, which lend them their grip. By lining these grooves with shape memory alloys, one can adjust their width and shape and thus change the mechanical and frictional properties of the tires. If you can thus switch between a tire that is good for asphalt to one that is good for dirt, automatically, then the grip on the road will remain optimal at all times.

A question rises on how to ascertain the type of road the car is on. One can either do it manually, by adding a dial on the dashboard to control which tire is now "on". Another way is to embed some sensor either on the tire, but probably preferable on the car, that detects the type of road and automatically adjusts the shape of the tires' grooves to the optimal one.

The last issue is the electricity required for the change. Usually, these materials require energy only upon changing from one state to the other, but even if not, the car has battery and the amount of electricity required is minimal, compared to other requirements in a car.

To conclude, one can not only optimize the materials and shape of the tire, but combining both one can enjoy all worlds of dynamically optimizing the tires' grooves' shape such that they will give the best grip and friction for the specific road traveled, thus increasing the driver and passengers' safety.

Pulsed-taste Candy

In recent psychological studies, Dan Arieli has shown something that is pretty obvious and yet powerful. It is better to have good things with breaks in the middle; that's how you enjoy the good things more. Each start is important and you do not habituate to the "goodness" of it, and thus making it boring. (A side note is that the bad things should be lumped together, to get them over with and to habituate to them. Something most people don't do).

Integrating this concept to candy, which is (I believe "by definition") a good thing, results in something that is lacking in the candy repertoire: a pulsed-taste candy. This means that the good taste of the candy should come in pulses, with breaks in the middle of neutral taste. Candy usually are "optimized" to either very good taste in the beginning (which sometimes have some after-taste), or "lasting taste", which habituates the usefulness and enjoyability of the taste.

My proposition is to engineer a candy that has good-neutral-good-neutral-etc. sequence of tastes. How to do that? I can think of two possible methods. The first is layered candy, meaning that the candy has several, hopefully more than four, layers that are either licked or sucked. Thus, each layer is exposed in a sequence slowly during the process. The key here is to have neutral-taste layers, such that the mouth (and us) "forget" the good taste and do not habituate to it. The next layer, after the neutral one, is again delicious, hopefully in another taste that again triggers our enjoyment.

The second option is to chemically engineer the substrates of the candy, such that the decomposition in the mouth, due to the enzymes that degrades the candy, release different tastes in a sequence. This is obviously much harder, but I believe still plausible way to go about it.

The point in both of these is to have long-lasting enjoyable taste and the good feeling of a tasty candy. I believe that my proposition is better equipped than simply have a long lasting single taste.

To summarize, good things should be pulses: good-neutral-good-neutral. I suggest to extend this concept to candy such that tastes will be better appreciated. Bon appetite!

Crafted Umbrellas

From a little survey of how umbrellas look and function, they are pretty much the same. A round, folding canvas above you head. Below are several suggestions for different designs, technology and functions of umbrellas.

Asymmetric umbrellas: why are all umbrellas symmetric? It's probably because the folding design. However, their function should not be symmetric. If you have a large backpack with a precious laptop in it, you want a lot of protection on back; much more elaborate than for the face. Also, if you're walking with your umbrella-less friend, you want to be able to extend the umbrella. I propose asymmetric umbrellas: oval shaped either on the front-back axis for protection of backpacks, or sideways-axis for a more-than-one person umbrella.

Hardened umbrellas. One of the most annoying things is wind, which usually accompanies the rain. However, most umbrella designers seem to have forgotten this basic fact. Umbrellas always fold the wrong way or completely brake in the very first squall. I propose hardened umbrellas: there are materials today that can change their hardness upon electrical current. Wouldn't it be nice to have a button on the umbrella that can harden it completely and then make it flabby again when we fold it? Better yet, plugging in a wind sensor could make this shift automatic, to have the optimal hardness given the current wind condition.

Water-collecting umbrellas. Another annoying aspect of umbrellas is that they protect you from the rain, but then water drips from its edges, usually on your feet or backpack. Why not have a drainage tube on the rim of the umbrella and either collect the water or make it flow into one constant flow, instead of every-which way?

These are just a handful of design projects to improve the lives of all the wet people.

May you have a dry day!

Renovation with Technology

I walk along Cambridge MA and see very beautiful old houses. I figure there are many of those scattered in the US and old Europe. While the view is charming and nostalgic, I'm pretty sure the inside of these houses are problematic at best, due to old plumbing, electricity and general maintenance. Obviously, one can tear down the house and build a new modern one, but that will break the style of the city and will leave a gaping hole in the fabric of nostalgia.

I propose a project that will both renovate the house and keep the style together. There are technologies today that can easily create a full 3D reconstruction of buildings out of mere photos taken from many sides (e.g. Building Rome in a Day). Furthermore, there are other very cheap technologies that use range sensing that can map the 3D structure of the house, e.g. Kinect. I propose to take an old and beautiful house and create a full 3D reconstruction of it. Then, design a fully modern, fully technologically equipped house that is both energy efficient, green and carry the most advanced technologies of the smart home, with the "minor" constraint that the outside appearance of the house would be exactly the same as the old one, with the failing paint job and rusty looking frames. Modern paints can have the look of old one but still be completely functioning in any weather. Moreover, by designing the house to be modular in every aspect, i.e. accessible panels for electricity and plumbing, light and strong interior walls, etc. one can build a house that will keep the appearance of old but be continually renovated as technology progresses.

This is a purely architectural and design project, but it holds the future of keeping the beautiful landscape of old towns with a renovation that is based in technology: living in an old-looking house should not be equivalent to living in an old house. Technology can definitely fix that.

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.