fingers
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Google patent uses finger frames to snap pics with Glass-like devices
If you thought wearing a Google Glass headset was awkward, things could get even weirder. The Mountain View company was awarded a patent this week for tech that enables a Glass-like head-mounted display to automatically take pictures when it recognizes your fingers. Specifically, it snaps a pic when you make one of those finger frames like you've seen movie directors use. The patent document also explains that the device can change the orientation of the image based on the positioning of your hands. For example, if you made a circular "O" shape with one hand, you'd end up with a round picture. And the same goes for using two hands to frame a rectangular portrait.
Your smartphone is changing the way your fingers work
Your smartphone is changing more than just your habits -- it's changing the way your hands work, too. Swiss researchers have discovered that activity in the brain's cortex associated with index fingers and thumbs is enhanced directly in proportion to how often you use your phone's touchscreen. That area of your mind will light up if you message your friends all week, but it'll fade the longer you spend away from your device. People with basic cellphones don't see this, according to the scientists. This suggests that repetitive smartphone use is altering your sensory processing, and that your brain is perceiving your digits in a different way. Whether or not that's a good thing is still up in the air, but it shows that you don't have to be in a profession driven by hand dexterity (such as music) to see a shift in how your brain and fingers work together. [Image credit: Shutterstock / nenetus]
MIT's new robot glove can give you extra fingers
Have you ever wondered if five fingers is really enough? The folks at MIT have. Researchers in the institute's department of mechanical engineering have created a robotic glove that adds two additional digits to the standard human claw, positioning two long fingers on either side of the hand. It's ridiculously easy to use, too. "You do not need to command the robot, but simply move your fingers naturally." Ford Professor of Engineering Harry Asada says. "Then the robotic fingers react and assist your fingers." The glove's movements are based on biomechanical synergy, the idea that each finger reacts to the movements of its peers - if you try to grasp a bottle, the glove's extra fingers will try to help.
Akimbo Kinect hack offers precise control with minimal effort (video)
We've seen Microsoft's Kinect used in countless ways, but 3Gear Systems means to better these predecessors with the beta release of its SDK, which turns all the subtleties of hand movement into actions. In addition to using two Kinect cameras for accuracy, the software compares hand poses against a pre-rendered database so gesture commands are executed with little lag. It offers complete control of a virtual 3D environment from the comfort of your natural desk position, so you won't have to worry about flail fatigue after long stints. A free public beta is available now until November 30th, at which point bigger companies will require a license, while individuals and small enterprises will continue to get complimentary access. We know what you're thinking -- it's just another Kinect hack -- but we suggest you reserve judgment til you've seen the demo below, showing examples of how the API could be used for CAD, medical, and of course, gaming applications.
Touch Bionics releases new prosthetic fingers, flips the old ones the bird
The only upgrades available for our puny human hands are gaming controller calluses, but if you're sporting an i-LIMB digits hand prosthesis, you can now grab a set of improved fingers. Touch Bionics' "smaller, lighter and more anatomically accurate" appendages are now available worldwide, as well as a new wrist-band unit which houses all the necessary computing power and juice for their function. Best of all, these developments allow more people to adopt the tech than the previous generation, including those with more petite hands or finger amputations closer to the knuckle. We don't know how much it'll cost for a fresh set, but we'll let health agencies and insurance companies deal with that part. With these upgrades and RSL Steeper's latest offering, it won't be long before our flesh-based variants are meager in comparison.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Fingle
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Adriaan de Jongh and Bojan Endrovski of Game Oven feel out the indie industry with Fingle, a finger foreplay title for iPad. What's your game called and what's it about?The game is called Fingle, which obviously is a play on words on "finger." It has a bit of mingle and fondle in it as well. The game is about bringing people closer together. A lot closer.A bit more in detail, Fingle is a cooperative two-player puzzle game for the iPad. Both players drag up to five buttons on color-matching targets. The targets often move and you move your fingers with them. The puzzles were designed in a way that it is impossible to avoid contact, resulting in intimate or awkward intertwined finger moments -- depending on who you play with, of course. And there are a few slow funk tunes in the mix to set the mood.Is Fingle solely a foreplay game, or is there a deeper strategy you envision for it?Fingle is most definitely more than a foreplay game. The first part of the game is intimate, but as players get accustomed to the feel and touch of each others fingers, the game slowly switches focus. Later levels require more and more cooperation and trust among players to finish them.The foreplay element is the lure, the hook, it's what will catch your attention. But it is also what sets the mood throughout the game. The visual style and music are completely true to that idea and help reinforce the formula. The result is an intimate game, sometimes suggestive, but only as dirty as the mind will make it.
iPhoto 101: Use two fingers to crop and rotate photos
Here's an interesting feature of iPhoto that I'd never heard of before, courtesy of Mac OS X Hints. While using Edit mode in the app, you can drag two fingers on your MacBook's touchpad (or your Magic Trackpad) to control the various edits with better precision than just dragging around a mouse. You can zoom the crop feature in or out, or even control it manually by dragging two fingers around. And you can rotate the photo in straighten mode just by rotating two fingers around the trackpad. There are more of these little gesture features hidden in Apple's iApps (like a three-finger swipe in iPhoto to move forward/backward through photos), and I'm sure we'll see a lot more of these pop up as we move closer to Lion and beyond. That touch interface is so intuitive and easy that it's no surprise Apple is already implementing it everywhere that it makes sense to do so.
iPads will be handed out to Japanese sumo wrestlers to facilitate 'swift communications'
The Japan Sumo Association isn't happy. No, not because of some trifling scandals and allegations of impropriety among its ranks, it's because sumo wrestlers and their managers aren't responding to fax and telephone communications. So what's a forward-looking sports body to do but turn to the latest craze in technology? Tablets. iPad tablets, to be precise, which will be distributed to the 51 wrestling clubs within the nation, in the hope of getting the sizable gentlemen to straighten their acts. One Japanese news agency speculates that the iPad's 10-inch dimensions would be just the digital panacea for people whose fingers are that little bit too large to operate mobile phones comfortably. And you thought there was no good reason for a jumbo iPod touch!
Skinput: because touchscreens never felt right anyway (video)
Microsoft looks to be on a bit of a hot streak with innovations lately, and though this here project hasn't received much hype (yet), we'd say it's one of the most ingenious user interface concepts we've come across. Skinput is based on an armband straddling the wearer's biceps and detecting the small vibrations generated when the user taps the skin of his arm. Due to different bone densities, tissue mass and muscle size, unique acoustic signatures can be identified for particular parts of the arm or hand (including fingers), allowing people to literally control their gear by touching themselves. The added pico projector is there just for convenience, and we can totally see ourselves using this by simply memorizing the five input points (current maximum, 95.5 percent accuracy), particularly since the band works even if you're running. Make your way past the break to see Tetris played in a whole new way.
Touch Bionics offers ProDigits for those missing their amateur ones
Touch Bionics has been at this bionic prosthetics business for a while now, already providing i-Limb solutions to those deprived of the use of their hands or arms. The company's latest innovation is to reduce all that tech down to the level of individual fingers, with its freshly announced ProDigits being able to replace anywhere between one and all of your precious little piggies. Relying on a traditional myoelectric regime -- which reacts to muscle signals from the residual hand -- or pressure from the remnant finger for its input, this invention can even be tweaked by doctors (over Bluetooth) to adjust the finer motor functions on a per patient basis. Costing up to £40,000 ($65,000), these new prosthetics will be custom-built for each person, and there are plans to apply to have them made available through national health insurance -- in countries that are into that sort of thing. Video after the break.
Kojima calls Metal Gear Solid Touch a 'simple MGS' shooter
Both 1UP and IGN have poked and prodded new details out of Japanese mag Famitsu's recent Metal Gear Solid Touch reveal, lifting the touchable curtains somewhat off Konami's upcoming head scratcher. According to the article, the game will be based on MGS4, with Metal Gear mastermind Kojima describing the iPhone app as a "Simple MGS." Translation: It's a shooter.In fact, Metal Gear's emphasis on stealth is being pocketed this time around in favor of something that is easier to pick up and play on the go, with much of the gameplay involving sliding and pinching the screen in typical iPhone fashion to move Snake's view and zoom in and out of targets. Additionally, shooting bad guys and exploding barrels is taken care of by tapping directly on the screen. We remain interested, albeit confused, about Snake's latest mission. But the weathered soldier isn't getting any younger, and with all of these fingers in the way, we wonder if he'll be able to see anything at all.Read – Kojima Goes In-Depth on Metal Gear Solid TouchRead – Metal Gear Solid Touch Detailed
Let your fingers do the manipulating
Forget Wii parties: the hot new trend is creating a 3D interface that you can manipulate with your fingers via the Wii. We can only guess that Minority Report, Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, and other media are heavily influencing people who want their virtual interfaces right now and see the Wii as a path to the future. Using our new hero Johnny Lee's efforts as a springboard, the guys at Cynergy Labs took the interactive interface and ran with it. With infrared gloves and a Wii remote, a picture is disassembled, reassembled, and moved around on the screen before our very eyes -- and everything is manipulated in mid-air, no actual touching required. The gloves allow for a more delicate (and accurate) range of movements, as is demonstrated later in the video, as they pair the set-up with an interface similar to Microsoft Surface for a distance-enhanced multi-touch experience.All we can say is: move over, robots. We've got to get busy welcoming our new fingertip overlords.
Friday Video: Taking a cue from Johnny Lee
While this may not be quite as exciting as Wii hacking, it's still worth noting. Johnny Lee is not alone in his experimentation with the Wii remote -- in fact, he's influencing others, like this Thai blogger. Take that banner and run with it, DIYers. We can only hope that developers are paying attention. We promise we won't complain about buying extra peripherals if you can deliver a truly unique experience!This video isn't quite as polished as Johnny Lee's, but it does have one thing in its favor, and that's Spider-man.
Mod your fingers into sensor bars
Armed with nothing but his hopes and dreams (and a large array of infrared LEDs, and also reflective tape, and let's throw "dreams" in there again), YouTube user Johnny Lee designed a method for using the Wiimote to track his finger movements. Basically, by sticking reflective tape to his fingertips and shining a bunch of infrared light on them, he made his fingers into a moving sensor bar! The Wii Remote picks up the reflected light and tracks the fingers' motion as if it were Wiimote motion. He then demonstrated some custom PC software that uses this gesture-based interface, manipulating some grids around by pointing at them. This is super cool, obviously, but it also gives us a weird idea: if this works, then it means that you can set the Wiimote on top of your TV and use the sensor bar as a controller. Except for the motion sensing, and, uh, all the buttons.[Via Joystiq]
Hitachi shows off finger-controlled steering wheel
Rest assured, there are plenty of steering wheels on the road right now that happily accept finger commands, but Hitachi's latest invention takes things one step further. The so-called finger vein authentication system can apparently be customized for a certain driver so that simple presses can adjust one's seat, load up a given playlist, tweak the equalizer, crank the AC or start up the engine. Moreover, such a system provides an additional layer of security against theft or unwanted drive-offs (think mischievous children). Reportedly, Hitachi is still unsure if / when this will actually hit vehicles on showroom floors, but a ballpark figure of "three to four years" was thrown out there for good measure.[Via AFP / Yahoo]
Keep iPhone clean with iPhone Fingers
Wait, this is a joke, right? Our friends at Engadget reported on this crazy product with plenty of snark, but no actual "haha we're kidding this isn't really real" hints. So is it true? Can you really buy black latex "fingers" to keep from getting smudges on your iPhone? And if so, what's up with the weird ending to the video above? It starts off with Love Actually and ends in CSI.Personally, I'm calling shenanigans on the whole thing-- I've been using my iPhone for about a week now, and while my old Razr was covered in smudges and splotches by this point, the glass on my iPhone's front is clean as a whistle. A really clean whistle. Oh sure, there have been smudges-- nobody's perfect. But anything I've seen on there has been easy enough to wipe off with just a smooth cloth. It's impressive, really.Still, if you can't be too careful (and if these aren't fake, which I'm not convinced of), you can get 25 of them-- in small, medium, large, and Wozniak-- for just €9.90, or for €3, they'll send you five to try out. Because sometimes, even the iPhone needs "protection."
Researchers craft microscale robotic hand for surgeries
It's no surprise that humans are doing less and less of the dirty work while they simply control robotic creatures that are actually doing the internal repairs, but a UCLA researcher has devised a ridiculously tiny "microhand" to handle even the smallest surgery-related tasks. The hand, which is said to be a "feat of microscale mechanical systems (MEMS)," measures just one millimeter across when closed into a fist, features four "fingers" made of six silicon wafers each, and touts four gas-powered balloons acting as the muscles at the wafers' joints. As you may expect, the gas lines that run to the balloons inflate and deflate the joints, causing the fingers to grasp and release as needed. The primary purpose is to eventually use the technology in new forms of "minimally invasive surgery," and although the microhand is likely years away from practical use, they're already in cahoots with robotic firm to develop a "slightly larger" rendition with an onboard camera for live action video feeds.[Via MedGadget]
