I can only imagine what it would be like trying to explain this implant to the nice folks at the airport security checkpoints!
Pre-sale of Cyborg implant for sensing North
51–60 of 85 posts
Re: Pre-sale of Cyborg implant for sensing North
#52I know that Liviu Babitz the founder of CyborgNest is on HN now. He should be answering your questions soon!
Re: Pre-sale of Cyborg implant for sensing North
#53It seems as though wearables like watches can already incorporate directional sensors and pretty much anything else that one might imagine. This product isn't really an implant. A "pierceable", perhaps. My guess is, this gadget is probably going to appeal mainly to the techno body modification crowd. In other words, a rather limited market, for now. Medical applications are where implants will eventually shine: gluco…
Hi there, Liviu from Cyborg Nest. Thnx for this! Yes, this is not a full implant, because at this stage we saw the mind change as the important thing and less the body change.
This is somehow still a limited market in general, we do hope to do the best and try to bring technology integration into the mainstream, the world is ready.
Here for anything else, Cheers!
Re: Pre-sale of Cyborg implant for sensing North
#54I know that Liviu Babitz the founder of CyborgNest is on HN now. He should be answering your questions soon! https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=LiviuBabitz
Hi, This is Liviu, Cyborg Nest Co-Founder, I'm here for any question, thnx for the time, love the chat. Liviu
Re: Pre-sale of Cyborg implant for sensing North
#55I find the compasses in most phones seem almost useless, as they are confused by themselves, and other electronic devices which are nearby. Will this be any more accurate? I would choose a phone specially for a better compass, as I often find google maps less useful in cities until I figure out which direction is north.
I've used expensive ($1-2 thousand USD) compasses that work really quite well, particularly if you don't suddenly spin around. So the tech exists, at least if you ignore power and size restrictions and up the price range a little. I imagine cellphones don't bother to get a good compass.
External metals are always a problem, though. You can incorporate accelerometer data which kinda helps to protect against quick transients.
Re: Pre-sale of Cyborg implant for sensing North
#56Looks like I'm the only one, but I think this is pretty nifty. Then again I had someone cut open my hand to shove in an rfid chip 10 years ago, which wasn't everybody's cup of tea either. What I'm most worried about is battery life. If I have to recharge every week (or more), I would give up after a few weeks. Also, what risk is there snagging this thing on your shirt when you get dressed, or crushing it under a barb…
If I'm ever going to have permanent implants, it's going to need to generate electricity from my blood.
http://news.mit.edu/2012/glucose-fuel-cell-0612
Many bonus points if the implant's power cell can mimic actual exercise.
Re: Pre-sale of Cyborg implant for sensing North
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, was hoping it actually would connect to something and give of different sensations based on direction, which in time the body/mind might recognize. This seemed more like an art-experiment than something cool.
AIUI people who wore the anklet version found they quickly ceased being conscious of the vibrations per se, and just had a sense of which way was north. ISTR people learn to see via a camera connected to a pad of electrodes on their tongue. The brain is pretty good at adapting to sensory input, it doesn't have to be wired directly to your nerves or anything.
Years back I wore the Northpaw anklet for a few weeks. I found that it was certainly possible to determine north with it, but never got from feeling vibrations to some "sense of which was is north". In fact, I found that it sometimes took a bit of turning around to get a feel of the direction.
I did not find it a very helpful tool for navigation. In my experience I orient myself by landmarks and constantly knowing exactly which way is north was not that useful, even when walking in nature. I did not try it in a completely unknown place though. Perhaps the most interesting part was how it corrected the intuitive picture of how my home city is oriented - the anklet clearly showed that streets that I always associated with straight north-south and east-west lines were curved and not so perfectly aligned.
Re: Pre-sale of Cyborg implant for sensing North
#58Might be handy if it's cloudy, but otherwise it's easier to look at shadows in daytime and the moon and stars at night.
Re: Pre-sale of Cyborg implant for sensing North
#59I'm really struggling to see why you'd want to install this in your body rather than just having it on your person. Is vibration really enhanced by implanting it? Also, this won't be you "closer to nature" because humans are not naturally attuned to physically know when we are facing north. Perhaps more importantly, how annoying would this be if every time you rolled over at night, you faced true north and got a nice…
I disagree. I almost always know where north is. Just pay a little attention to shadows.
Re: Pre-sale of Cyborg implant for sensing North
#60Don't people know most of the time to what direction is north? you just look at the sun imagine it's trajectory and you have enough information for 90% of the use cases. Or stars...