GPS equipped shoes that will lead you home with LED signals • Hacker News Board

Re: GPS equipped shoes that will lead you home with LED signals

#21

Post by jl6 » Wed, Sep 19, 2012, 7:35 PM UTC

Dave Lister: Sometimes I think it's cruel giving machines a personality. My mate Petersen once brought a pair of shoes with artificial intelligence. Smart Shoes, they were called. It was a neat idea. No matter how blind drunk you were, they would always get you home. Then he got ratted one night in Oslo, and woke up the next morning in Burma. See, the shoes got bored just going from his local to the flat. They wanted to see the world, man, y'know? He had a helluva job getting rid of them. No matter who he sold them to, they'd show up again the next day! He tried to shut them out, but they just kicked the door down, y'know?
Arnold Rimmer: Is this true?
Dave Lister: Yeah! Last thing he heard, they'd sort of, erm, robbed a car and drove it into a canal. They couldn't steer, y'see.
Arnold Rimmer: Really?!

Dave Lister: Yeah. Petersen was really, really blown away by it. He went to see a priest. The priest told him, he said, it was alright, and all that, and the shoes were happy, and they'd gone to heaven. Y'see, it turns out shoes have soles.

-- Red Dwarf, 1988.

Re: GPS equipped shoes that will lead you home with LED signals

#22

Post by essayist » Wed, Sep 19, 2012, 7:52 PM UTC

guylhem wrote: post #2

Sometimes I lament about the lack of creativity shown here (yet another twitter/facebook/ad based company, etc) and say to myself that we, the human race, can and should do much better. But this is great- a perfect union of technology and fashion to build something that's not just cool, but ubercool, highly desirable, with many applications (say alzeihmer patients?) When was the last time you got yourself lost in a c…

I had the same thought about Alzheimers sufferers - I know a handful, one quite well.

Alas, part of the challenge of the disease is that you're generally not able to use mental "crutches". E.g. give the person step-by-step instructions, and he misplaces them.

In this case, I'd guess that advanced sufferers would most likely not think to look down at what their shoes were telling them or not be able to interpret what they saw.

Now if there were a gentle way to have the shoes compel walking in a certain direction, you'd have something very useful for this population.

Re: GPS equipped shoes that will lead you home with LED signals

#23

Post by guylhem » Wed, Sep 19, 2012, 8:18 PM UTC

essayist wrote: post #22

guylhem wrote: post #2

Sometimes I lament about the lack of creativity shown here (yet another twitter/facebook/ad based company, etc) and say to myself that we, the human race, can and should do much better. But this is great- a perfect union of technology and fashion to build something that's not just cool, but ubercool, highly desirable, with many applications (say alzeihmer patients?) When was the last time you got yourself lost in a c…

I had the same thought about Alzheimers sufferers - I know a handful, one quite well. Alas, part of the challenge of the disease is that you're generally not able to use mental "crutches". E.g. give the person step-by-step instructions, and he misplaces them. In this case, I'd guess that advanced sufferers would most likely not think to look down at what their shoes were telling them or not be able to interpret what…

Not sure how alzheimer works, but some memories dont vanish - especially the early ones. I.E. when our generation is stuck by the disease (if no cure has been found) will we forget how to use cell phones or a web browser ??

So early technology exposure could change a lot about how the disease impact life.

Now if such shoes could exist soon, and people could be exposed to them in an early age, yes that would be a real game change about the impact of alzheimer. (if I m correct about how it works)

Re: GPS equipped shoes that will lead you home with LED signals

#24

Post by femto » Wed, Sep 19, 2012, 11:24 PM UTC

essayist wrote: post #22

guylhem wrote: post #2

Sometimes I lament about the lack of creativity shown here (yet another twitter/facebook/ad based company, etc) and say to myself that we, the human race, can and should do much better. But this is great- a perfect union of technology and fashion to build something that's not just cool, but ubercool, highly desirable, with many applications (say alzeihmer patients?) When was the last time you got yourself lost in a c…

I had the same thought about Alzheimers sufferers - I know a handful, one quite well. Alas, part of the challenge of the disease is that you're generally not able to use mental "crutches". E.g. give the person step-by-step instructions, and he misplaces them. In this case, I'd guess that advanced sufferers would most likely not think to look down at what their shoes were telling them or not be able to interpret what…

> Now if there were a gentle way to have the shoes compel walking in a certain direction,..

How about Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS), demonstrated by NTT in 2005 [1,2]? There's also a GVS implementation using an Arduino [3], so it is ripe for integration, especially given the availability of a GPS shield for the Arduino. An auto-homing human!

[1] http://www.semanticmedia-showcase.de/WerkstattSM/Forschung/S...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlNfBrXYYTc

[3] http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,21780.0.html