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Over the centuries, human understand the world around them through their five sensing methods – seeing, hearing, smelling, hearing and tasting. No matter what, information on any object that comes across our way is perceived with the help of these senses before making a relevant decision. But now things have changed, the most useful information about everything is available on internet, making it our sixth sense and a decision on anything needs a consultation with the data, knowledge available online. This information comes to us via smartphones, tablets, laptops etc. thereby providing a round-the-clock link-less connection with the digital world. Information, in normal cases, is available on the paper or digitally on a screen.
Now, this is where sixth sense technology makes its introduction taking the digital information from the confined limits of a screen or paper to the outer world making the entire space around us a BIG screen and using our hand gestures to interact with the information. Sixth sense technology takes the digital information from the intangible world to the tangible world. Interaction with the world becomes a ‘never before experienced affair’ with the sixth sense technology. One of the greatest outcomes of this technology is its ability to scan a human as well as an object and readily project all the available information about it.
Sixth sense is basically a wearable gestural interface which facilitates the digital information to the physical world around us and makes the interaction with it a much easier task with natural hand gestures. The father of Sixth sense technology is Steve Mann with his invention of wearable computer in 1990. His implementation was based on a neck-worn projector along with a camera system and later this project was carried out by Pranav Mistry (both of them was part of the MIT media Lab). Pranav Mistry came up with an implementation for sixth sense technology that consisted of components like a tiny projector, camera, mirror and color markers. The camera and the projector have a connection to a mobile device in the user’s pocket. With the help of camera and projector, it is meant to see anything and everything you see and projects information about it on walls, surfaces etc. and allow us to interact with the same using simple hand gestures or arm movements. Sixth sense technology is all set to take off the limits of information being displayed and relentlessly synchronize it with reality to make sure ‘the entire world is your computer’. For layman, this concept may seem like an impossible truth or it may seem to be a supernatural idea for many others. But believe it or not, Sixth sense technology has already shocked the society.As of now, it is not being widely known but over the time it’s sure that, sixth sense technology will definitely change our viewpoint about the world.
In scientific terms or non-scientific terms, it is defined as Extra Sensory Perception (ESP). Here, information is neither gained by any of the five sensing organs nor it is a follow-up of any past or known experiences. It is on its way to seamlessly integrate the available online information and technical details to everyday life. This is sure to make decision making process beyond the one accessible by our five senses and it definitely provides the user’s with a Sixth Sense.
A group of seven grad students of MIT started to think out of the box on a concept of making human more integrated to the surrounding world and get in touch with the information without taking one’s phone out of their pockets. Initially, a wristband was developed that would read a RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag to enquire about the book held by a user in a store. Also, a ring that made use of infrared rays that communicated by beacon to the smart shelves in a supermarket to provide the information about the products. Depending on the criterion that is programmed on the system, a red or green glow occurs on the ring to indicate whether the product is organic or not. Still, the problem exists of taking out the phone to access information. An idea evolved about accessing information directly from internet and projecting it. In the early phase, a large projector was used which was mounted on a helmet for projecting data and turned out to be difficulty during a conversation with friend, which would project the data on friend’s face.
Recent Prototype
The recent prototype consists of a smaller projector which looks like a pendant prototype that can be worn around the neck. The prototype consists of hardware components such as a pocket projector, camera and a mirror which are coupled to form a pendant-like wearable mobile device. This technology is a combination of computer and cell phone. This device is hanged around the neck and the projection is done by micro-projector that is attached to the device. In short time, you become a moving computer of your own and your fingers behave as the mouse as well as the keyboard.
Pranav Mistry created the prototype with an ordinary webcam, an attached mirror and a battery-powered 3M projector – all of which is connected to a mobile phone that is internet enabled. The prototype costs $350 or less and permits the user to project data from the phone via projector onto any surface like walls, body or hand of a person. During the introduction of this technology, Mistry wore this device around the neck with colored marker caps on four fingers that helped to distinguish four fingers by the camera and identify his hand gestures with the support of software that was developed by Mistry.
Working of Sixth Sense Technology
The hardware components that make up a mobile wearable device are:
1.Camera
A camera is acting as a digital eye, which sees everything the user sees. The camera is meant to capture and recognize objects in its view and does the tracking of user’s hand gestures using techniques based on computer-vision. The camera tracks all the movements made by the thumbs as well as the index fingers of both the hands of the user. On recognizing the object, the camera sends the data to a smart phone for processing.
The sixth sense setup consists of an internet-enabled smartphone which processes the data send from the camera. Smartphone is used to send and receive data and voice information from anywhere and to anyone through mobile internet. Software is run on the smartphone which supports this technolgy and handles data connection. The smartphone is meant to search the web and to interpret hand gestures. Computer–vision based techniques include programming using Symbian C++ code with more 50,000 lines of code.
The smartphone interprets the data and this data is projected onto a surface mainly walls, body or hands of a person. A battery is found inside the projector which provides 3 hours battery life. Visual information is projected on to the surfaces and other physical objects which are used as interfaces by the projector. This projection of information is done by a tiny LED projector. The image is projected on to the mirror by the downward facing projector. On touching an object, the information related to the same will appear which will look like the information is part of the object.
The mirror is used as the projector hangs from the neck pointing downwards and it reflects the image to a desired surface. This step finally frees the digital information from its confines and places it to the physical world.
The color markers that are red, green, blue and yellow are placed at the tips of the fingers which helps the camera to recognize the hand gestures. The various movements and structural arrangements made by these markers are interpreted as gestures that subsequently act as an instruction for the application interfaces that are projected.
The software that is being used by the smartphone recognizes gestures that come under 3 divisions:
Multi-Touch gestures: Multiple fingers are used to move or drag an item like finding a place in maps using your iPhone.
Freehand gestures: These gestures include an action to take a picture or doing cultural rite.
Iconic gestures: These are customized gestures used to denote certain actions like drawing a star should show weather report, drawing a magnifying glass should show the map.
The applications of sixth sense technology are so wide. As already stated, devices with this technology is meant to bring the digital information to the physical real world thereby bridging the existing gap. The recent sixth sense prototype device has showed off its usefulness, flexibility and viability of this technology. The only limitation to this technology is human imagination. Some of the practical applications of this technology are stated below:
1.Taking Pictures
With the help of framing gestures by hands, user can take pictures of different locations in minimum time. After taking the photos, the user can review the pictures by displaying it onto any surface and then sorting, organizing and resizing the pictures.
Navigation using maps are becoming very common these days. From millions of sources to millions of destinations, this application provides an accurate route along your path. At any instance, Map application helps the user to view any specific location and navigate through it by projecting the map onto a surface. With the help of fingers, mainly the thumb and index fingers, user can zoom in/out or pan the selected area.
3.Drawing Application
This application allows the user to draw on any surface and the drawings are tracked by the movements of finger tips especially the index finger. These pictures can be stored and replaced to any other surface with ease. User with the help of hand gestures can do shuffling through available pictures and drawings.
4.Making Calls
The sixth sense technology supporting device makes calling an easier job. This will project a keypad on your palm or use virtual keypad to make calls thus protecting the privacy. This technique is implemented in other technologies like Skinput. This application helps people with disability to call to a particular number at ease.
The sixth sense technology brings information about different physical objects in minimum time and in a better format. By drawing a circle on the wrist hand, displays an analog watch. Likewise, while reading newspapers, in place of written article, it shows live video news or else, even a paper is capable of providing dynamic information.
This technology driven devices are capable of providing information related to any object that is in touch with the user. For example, on holding a book, this device supplies the Amazon or Google ratings of the book as well as the reviews and other relevant details about the book. Also, using this technology, there is no more delay in searching the flight status. The device recognizes the boarding pass and informs the user about the flight status whether it is on time or not.
7.Sixth sense technology does some actions by simple customized hand gestures like an ‘@’ simple when drawn will automatically redirect the user to check mails or a magnifying glass when drawn provides a map onto the surface.
As future enhancements, the team is working on to get rid of the use of color markers so as to capture gestures made by hands with ease. Also implementing camera and projector onto a smartphone or mobile device together can reduce the total space occupied by both and will make it more handy. The team is also working on 3D gesture tracking since nowadays 3D images are a common scenario. This technology can be definitely a fifth sense for a disabled person.
Digital information nowadays is confined to the limits of computer screen or paper. Here, sixth sense technology is taking the natural ways of data display into a new phase which frees data from all its limits and integrates it with the real world seamlessly. It takes out the digital information to the physical world and bridges the gap by bringing the information from the intangible world to the tangible world. Sixth sense technology senses a physical object and projects all information about the object onto any surface let it be wall or hand/ body of a person. This technology is all set to bring that transparent interface to access information about anything and everything around us. Sixth sense technology is definitely the invention of the era and ‘Get ready to be part of the magical world’.
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