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Ear-tugging navigator gizmo technology on display at meet
By Janet McConnaughey |
August 3, 2009, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IF you pull on my ear, will I follow you anywhere?
Yes, say researchers at University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo. And along complex paths. Even when the pulls are directed from a distance.
Their ear-tugging navigator looks like a bug-shaped hat and may be the oddest gizmo among nearly three dozens in the "Emerging Technologies" area of SIGGRAPH 2009, the 36th international conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques in New Orleans.
The conference from today through Friday also includes an animation festival, game design and animation workshops and contests, a studio, an art show, and other showcases and exhibits.
Pull-Navi device
The 33 "Emerging Technologies" exhibits include a click-and-drag graphical editor to tell robots how to perform complex tasks such as folding clothes; an umbrella that moves as if you were fending off a downpour of rain, spaghetti or toy snakes; and a virtual reality floor that designers say can feel like walking on snow.
The ear navigator, called Pull-Navi, has six helmet-mounted motors to pull the wearer's ears forward, backward, left, right, up and down.
The designers say people follow its lead almost instinctively - pull left and they turn that way; pulling both ears forward or backward at the same time makes them speed up or slow down; and tugging up or down heads them up or down stairs.
It goes into the who'da-thunk-it category of exhibits.
"Every year there's just some submissions that are just so completely wacky it's not really on anyone's radar," said Mk (pronounced M-K) Haley, one of the jurors for Emerging Technologies since 1998. "They get everybody thinking and discussing."
This one, she said, got her thinking, "Wow. Human beings can really be physically manipulated so easily. And what other applications may there be for that?"
Postcard site
Past exhibits heralding applications now commonplace have included Electric Postcards in 1995 and, in 1991, Michigan State University's informational kiosk, called Click On MSU.
MIT Media Lab researcher Judith S. Donath, who studies online social interaction, was startled by the popularity of the Internet postcard site she created to learn a computer language and showed off at SIGGRAPH 1995.
"People didn't realize the social possibilities of the Internet. You could put news there, buy things, maybe. But it wasn't particularly social," she said.
She thought a few of her friends might send each other cards from the site, which opened in December 1994. But it went viral - a phrase not then coined. "We eventually had millions and millions of cards sent through it," she said.
American Greetings Corp began offering e-cards in 1996 and Hallmark Cards Inc in late 1998, spokesmen said. American Greetings now has 3.9 million e-card subscribers, according to Frank Cirillo. Hallmark estimates that, industrywide, about one e-card is sent for every 20 paper cards bought, Sarah Gronberg Kolell wrote in an e-mail.
Click ons
The MSU kiosk was put into use in 1990. Although Macintosh introduced its point-and-click interface six years earlier, most desktop computers still used text and menus. MSU's designers called their icons "click ons" to be sure people would know what to do.
"On the top of every page, it would say, 'Click on a click on,'" said Carrie Heeter, now creative director for MSU's Virtual University Design and Technology group and professor of serious game design in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media.
Now elementary school Websites have linked pages, and toddlers know how to click the mice and use the computers.
Yes, say researchers at University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo. And along complex paths. Even when the pulls are directed from a distance.
Their ear-tugging navigator looks like a bug-shaped hat and may be the oddest gizmo among nearly three dozens in the "Emerging Technologies" area of SIGGRAPH 2009, the 36th international conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques in New Orleans.
The conference from today through Friday also includes an animation festival, game design and animation workshops and contests, a studio, an art show, and other showcases and exhibits.
Pull-Navi device
The 33 "Emerging Technologies" exhibits include a click-and-drag graphical editor to tell robots how to perform complex tasks such as folding clothes; an umbrella that moves as if you were fending off a downpour of rain, spaghetti or toy snakes; and a virtual reality floor that designers say can feel like walking on snow.
The ear navigator, called Pull-Navi, has six helmet-mounted motors to pull the wearer's ears forward, backward, left, right, up and down.
The designers say people follow its lead almost instinctively - pull left and they turn that way; pulling both ears forward or backward at the same time makes them speed up or slow down; and tugging up or down heads them up or down stairs.
It goes into the who'da-thunk-it category of exhibits.
"Every year there's just some submissions that are just so completely wacky it's not really on anyone's radar," said Mk (pronounced M-K) Haley, one of the jurors for Emerging Technologies since 1998. "They get everybody thinking and discussing."
This one, she said, got her thinking, "Wow. Human beings can really be physically manipulated so easily. And what other applications may there be for that?"
Postcard site
Past exhibits heralding applications now commonplace have included Electric Postcards in 1995 and, in 1991, Michigan State University's informational kiosk, called Click On MSU.
MIT Media Lab researcher Judith S. Donath, who studies online social interaction, was startled by the popularity of the Internet postcard site she created to learn a computer language and showed off at SIGGRAPH 1995.
"People didn't realize the social possibilities of the Internet. You could put news there, buy things, maybe. But it wasn't particularly social," she said.
She thought a few of her friends might send each other cards from the site, which opened in December 1994. But it went viral - a phrase not then coined. "We eventually had millions and millions of cards sent through it," she said.
American Greetings Corp began offering e-cards in 1996 and Hallmark Cards Inc in late 1998, spokesmen said. American Greetings now has 3.9 million e-card subscribers, according to Frank Cirillo. Hallmark estimates that, industrywide, about one e-card is sent for every 20 paper cards bought, Sarah Gronberg Kolell wrote in an e-mail.
Click ons
The MSU kiosk was put into use in 1990. Although Macintosh introduced its point-and-click interface six years earlier, most desktop computers still used text and menus. MSU's designers called their icons "click ons" to be sure people would know what to do.
"On the top of every page, it would say, 'Click on a click on,'" said Carrie Heeter, now creative director for MSU's Virtual University Design and Technology group and professor of serious game design in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media.
Now elementary school Websites have linked pages, and toddlers know how to click the mice and use the computers.
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