Disney just won a lot of respect by me (and probably by millions of others); the awesomeness of this is staggering.
By funding a university research department?
Yeah, and many more:
http://www.disneyresearch.com/labs/index.htm
Touché by Disney Research brings touch control to everyday things
11–20 of 50 posts
Re: Touché by Disney Research brings touch control to everyday things
#12What the hell is that part about kids and breakfast?! "Could be used to monitor and train kinds to use the right implements to eat breakfast". That is just messed up. In all seriousness this is freaking awesome tech. Will definitely be huge, unless they fuck up the licensing or patent it to death.
> What the hell is that part about kids and breakfast?! "Could be used to monitor and train kinds to use the right implements to eat breakfast". That is just messed up.
Messed up? You're just looking at what it's doing, not how it can be applied. The ability to monitor a child with special needs with this sort of application is pretty amazing. Suddenly, this information can be transmitted and used to assist with therapy. Knowing how often a child uses a spoon/fork rather than his hands due to real data rather than parents recalling is powerful.
It also provides powerful feedback. A system setup to remind them child if they stop using their fork/spoon by showing a picture to remind them. This is already used in training. Unfortunately, it can't be automated. Tools like this would allow for that, and the potential is staggering. We are clearly years away, but this has the great potential to really help people.
Re: Touché by Disney Research brings touch control to everyday things
#13This seems like an important step towards the fabled "Computronium"(1) allowing our environments to compute. Heavy handed regulators should pay very close attention to the consequences of monopolies granted around these ideas. One misstep allowing the patenting of "controlling stuff with touch" instead of allowing only the much more restrictive specific methods of detecting that touch could prune an entire branch off our technological development tree for decades to come.
Re: Touché by Disney Research brings touch control to everyday things
#14I'd love to see this applied to guns where you have to make a much more intentioned grip for the safety to be disabled.
a gun that senses it is being held in a weird way will not fire.
I think the first application will be on a mouse. A mouse that has multi-dimensional touch features would be great.
This will also make creating an interface to control things like the whole house very easy. Basically enabling complex control of a full building's BMS easily.
Re: Touché by Disney Research brings touch control to everyday things
#15There's also more important applications for this, for example detecting common postures and grips on fallen asleep drivers or knives that know when their not being handled properly. Additionally a world of possibilities opens up for the blind and disabled if you can inform them of objects they are touching in a room. I find these applications (and surely many more I am not enumerating) much more appealing then contr…
I think it will be a wonderful boon for people with artificial limbs. A sense of touch may be all that is needed to reduce phantom limb pain, among other things.
> A sense of touch may be all that is needed to reduce phantom limb pain, among other things.
Actually, I remember hearing that a simple mirror can do that.
Re: Touché by Disney Research brings touch control to everyday things
#16I'd love to see this applied to guns where you have to make a much more intentioned grip for the safety to be disabled. a gun that senses it is being held in a weird way will not fire. I think the first application will be on a mouse. A mouse that has multi-dimensional touch features would be great. This will also make creating an interface to control things like the whole house very easy. Basically enabling complex…
Is that a big problem? Why don't the gun owners who perceive that as a problem use the safety or buy a gun with greater trigger pressure? If they don't do those things, why would they want to pay to add this feature?
Re: Touché by Disney Research brings touch control to everyday things
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it will be a wonderful boon for people with artificial limbs. A sense of touch may be all that is needed to reduce phantom limb pain, among other things.
> A sense of touch may be all that is needed to reduce phantom limb pain, among other things. Actually, I remember hearing that a simple mirror can do that.
That's very true, but you can't use a mirror to grasp an object.
Re: Touché by Disney Research brings touch control to everyday things
#18What the hell is that part about kids and breakfast?! "Could be used to monitor and train kinds to use the right implements to eat breakfast". That is just messed up. In all seriousness this is freaking awesome tech. Will definitely be huge, unless they fuck up the licensing or patent it to death.
> What the hell is that part about kids and breakfast?! "Could be used to monitor and train kinds to use the right implements to eat breakfast". That is just messed up. Messed up? You're just looking at what it's doing, not how it can be applied. The ability to monitor a child with special needs with this sort of application is pretty amazing. Suddenly, this information can be transmitted and used to assist with ther…
That is a really great point!
I was really only appalled by the specific application of audio feedback used in the demo. And as such I blatantly discarded the whole idea of feedback systems. But when I think about it, that area is huge.
I really want one of those sensor plates with an arduino interface!
Re: Touché by Disney Research brings touch control to everyday things
#19Mysterious how HN submissions get picked up... I submitted this yesterday via VentureBeat:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3931173
Re: Touché by Disney Research brings touch control to everyday things
#20I'd love to see this applied to guns where you have to make a much more intentioned grip for the safety to be disabled. a gun that senses it is being held in a weird way will not fire. I think the first application will be on a mouse. A mouse that has multi-dimensional touch features would be great. This will also make creating an interface to control things like the whole house very easy. Basically enabling complex…
or how about guns that won't fire because you aren't the registered owner (or approved on 'firing list' of some sort, in the case of, let's say, a wife that's home alone when a burglar comes).
Brings a whole new meaning to hacking, also.