NEWS
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The Human Touch
Other | Thursday 17th May 2012 | Osh
Technology changes the way we live. With everything being touch screen, motion-sensed or electronic nowadays, where will we end up in 10 years’ time? Will any task be done without the use of technology?
Eye-Phones:
Google are developing a range of 4G glasses with internet links, minute screens and GPS sensors to be revealed sometime this year. It has been said that the company have already composed of prototype of the product, with high speed processing power and all the functions of the latest Android phones, just inches from your eyes.
The New York Times revealed the glasses are expected to cost between $250 and $600, and that Google are working to devise specific privacy settings for the glasses. The goggles are rumoured to work via brand new motion-sense technology, which works by recording the user’s eye movements for menu selections, app usage and a calling tool, just like a regular mobile phone.
Imagine having a phone that you never hold in your hand; that perches over your nose and comes to life, even through the most subtle movements of your eyes. This could all be reality by Christmas. And with additional functions such as a camera, microphone and speakers expected to be included with the product, you need never lift a finger again.
Disney Touchés on Human Touch Screen:
As revealed by the Metro newspaper this morning, Disney is also jumping on the extreme, excessive technological advances bandwagon. The creators of ‘Snow White’, ‘Toy Story’ and ‘Peter Pan’ have recently formed incredible technical wizardry that could potentially change the way we live, and make the use of buttons archaic forever.
Disney researchers are working with a new technology called Touché, which is already in use for various smartphones and tablets. The Touché system can recognise the different types of touch, and therefore, the user’s emotions and intentions with the touch screen device. Instead of swiping your smartphone, Disney hope Touché will literally place everything in the palm of your hand, no hand-held device necessary. Users may be able to use the technology by swiping their arm over their hand to select something.
If successful, Touché could result in a phone that locks itself due to the way it was touched by the user. The senior research scientist at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, Dr. Ivan Poupyrev explained that the technology “…can make the world around us…interactive, very easily and inexpensively- yet the technology would be visible.” “No buttons, sliders or touch screens.” he continued.
As the technological development is expected to be fairly cheap, it is likely to be accessible to the multitude.
Based on a technique called Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing, which allows objects to comprehend the way it is touched by the user, and therefore what the user requires. The sense driven technology is already used in touch table screens, although these devices can only recognise whether they are being touched or not.
Touché works by producing an electrical signal at a particular frequency level, and calculating the change between that frequency, and the frequency experienced by fingers touching the product. Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing can gage and analyse a number of frequencies, meaning different gestures can be recognised and reacted through.
By applying an electrical wave to and an object and measuring how the wave changes because of the object is how Touché works. It could be used almost anywhere because all the technology requires is a wired link to a control sensor.
With regards to human interaction, your body could be a touch sensor if your gestures and movements are directed to a sensor controller via wireless Bluetooth.
Dangerous or Necessary: Where Will Technology Peak?
A 2011 poll by the BBC revealed that children in the UK tend to watch about 3 hours of television a day and spend about 2 hours online everyday. The survey of 2,445 16 year-olds discovered that two-thirds of kids own their own computer and have internet access in their own room.
However ground-breaking these new technological developments may be, they could cause children and adults alike to become even more dependent on technology on a day to day basis. Nowadays, every office you’re likely to come across is full of computers, mobile phones and tablets, but as more changes occur, perhaps it is up to the general public to just grin and bear it and keep up with what’s out there.
Dependency or Convenience?
The fact is, society’s dependency on technology have increased alarmingly over the last few years particularly. And, regardless of how speedy and useful the internet may be, it has caused intense breakdowns of communications, especially with young people who have grown up with such technical advances; it’s all they know.
Until Disney/Pixar’s 2005 film ‘Toy Story’ all animation was tediously hand drawn, but since then, computer animation has been used in the majority of non-live actor films. Now, when we look at classics such as ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘The Fox and the Hound’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’, we are likely to be startled by the lack of modern-based quality in what we see. Similarly, live shot films’ quality has progressed leaps and bounds due to improvements with colour pixel conditions.
Often, when new technology is introduced to us, we become accustomed to it, and it becomes a part of our daily routine, we question how we ever coped without it. Think of your mobile phone. Consider how much you relay on it to contact friends, family and colleagues. Or email; contemplate where you would be without those spread sheets your boss sent you.
No one can stop research, or predict where science will reach it’ pinnacle. But devices that are able to predict the user’s intentions through their movements is incredible. Humans are curious and potential developments stretch as far as the mind can wonder.
Technology has helped rekindled kindles old relationships, kept long distance relationships in motion, and allows people to display their life online. But with the jump from desktop to computers to laptops, and books to Kindles, who knows where it will end?
Google’s Glasses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c6W4CCU9M4&feature=player_embedded
Disney’s Touché Technology:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=E4tYpXVTjxA
Marianne Calnan
