Spray-on
gadgetry isn't
exactly new, but the possibility of spritzing a computer on your epidermis most certainly piqued our interest. A team of Scottish scientists have reportedly "developed a computer the size of a matchstick head, thousands of which can be sprayed onto patients to give a comprehensive analysis of their condition." The device(s) joins the ever-growing
array of communication-enabled
health sensors aimed at helping the elderly stay in contact with their doctors even in remote locations, and can compute a variety of inputs such as blood pressure, muscle movement, and pulse rate. The technology, dubbed speckled computing, can even be rigged to transmit information via radio waves, meaning that a full-fledged diagnostic report could get a whole lot less
invasive if this stuff pans out.
[Via
MedGadget, photo courtesy of
EISF]
posted Apr 10th 2007 3:03AM
Sounds interesting, but what are the bets that this will disappear and never be seen again?
Creepily resembles the nano-swarms from Michael Crichton's
"Prey"
imagine the feeling of getting sprayed with thousands of matchstick heads.
eh. still seems a bit large
..and painful!
They actually got Doom running on it, but then the guy's arm brushed the wall walking to the bathroom and that was pretty much it for the experiment.
Speaking of which, are they just gonna wash off in the shower to grow into a super intelligent colony in the sewers?
Because that would suck.
Cool, maybe this is the way to actually implement a "neural" network, spray some of these on my brain please.
Ridge Racer has been announced for these matchhead computers already.
"Spray-On" computers?? This sounds a bit like a late April Fools gag. I mean, how do you "spray on" matchstick heads? They don't exactly fit into spray cans. More like "flick on" on computers. Perhaps booger-size?
Seriously, folks. The picture above provides very little to suggest that it's actually the size of a matchstick head and, to me, looks much larger. Sorry, I'm calling fake on this one...