![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
Well, uh, hmm what to say. Heres my idea, id like any thoughts you have on it. It's an interesting concept if nothing else and im crazy enough to go through with it if at all possible. There may be a few spelling or grammer errors, I wrote the majority of this at 5AM on very little sleep and without the aid of spell check.
Machine-To-Human Interface Concept By Victor
I guess I should begin with some images.
Pic 1 Pic 2
What your looking at is an image of a tattoo I recently received. The design comes from the anime series Ghost in the Shell. Its a copy of the neural interface jacks the characters have. Of course this is only a tattoo and is really only for astetics. While joking about glueing jacks to my skin for halloween I came up with a novel idea, there is a way I could possibly interface with a machine.
People can get what are called nape piercings, or essentially bars put through the skin on the back of their necks. My idea was that I could get small bars pierced within the circles and then attach electrodes to those. What this would allow me to do is send small pulses of electricity through the piercings that I could feel. Not strong enough to cause pain just sense. With four electrodes I would have multiple 'input' paths, I could control the voltage going to each one. With a proper controller and the right software I could develop sequences to pulse over the electrodes to transmit data. It would work a lot like morse code only this I believe would be more efficent because there are more possibile unique patterns possible with four electrodes.
Here is a breakdown of events in the case of transmitting a word.
1. Program reads word and sends data to controller over USB.
2. Controller picks up data and encodes it into the correct sequence of pulses.
3. Controller transmits sequence over wires to electrodes.
4. Electrodes produce the pattern of sensation at the contact points.
5. My mind translates the sequence of letters into the word.
Of course this system is one-way as only the machine can transmit data to me using this method. The unknown factor is how well or even if I will be able to translate these signals, it will be a conscous effort. I believe with enough time and training it may become intuitive but this is mere speculation on my part. There is also the possibility that the contact points are to close and I would not be able to differentiate the signals, this would take some testing to determine.
I believe this system could also be used to provide additional input paths for wearable computing projects.
I chose USB as my computer-to-controller interface because it is powered. It could provide the low-voltages to make this system work. I would like the jacks themselves to be something like A/V cables, the reason I like these instead of RJ-45 or similar jacks becase if they get tugged they will just pull free with minimal pain on my part.
The most mysterious part of this whole project is my idea of the controller box. I know that this is possible but I have no idea on the specifics. It would have to be able to switch voltages based on the data sent to it through USB. Im not sure if the 5V USB puts out would be enough to sense or even to much, I will have to test it out. I doubt I would be able to build this on my own but if I can get the idea down there are people I know locally able to produce custom electronics.
I believe the hardest part of this whole idea is the control software. Beyond HTML, XML, and some light C/C++ I have little knowledge of programming. It will probably take me a great deal of time to research/develop it on my own without any assisstance if at all. If your interested let me know
Well this is the idea in a nutshell really. Please feel free to pick out any holes in my logic, the tattoo ink might be affecting my thought processes I know this is sort of an odd place to post this sort of idea, but hell, if this isn't a [H]ard idea I don't know what is.
Machine-To-Human Interface Concept By Victor
I guess I should begin with some images.
Pic 1 Pic 2
What your looking at is an image of a tattoo I recently received. The design comes from the anime series Ghost in the Shell. Its a copy of the neural interface jacks the characters have. Of course this is only a tattoo and is really only for astetics. While joking about glueing jacks to my skin for halloween I came up with a novel idea, there is a way I could possibly interface with a machine.
People can get what are called nape piercings, or essentially bars put through the skin on the back of their necks. My idea was that I could get small bars pierced within the circles and then attach electrodes to those. What this would allow me to do is send small pulses of electricity through the piercings that I could feel. Not strong enough to cause pain just sense. With four electrodes I would have multiple 'input' paths, I could control the voltage going to each one. With a proper controller and the right software I could develop sequences to pulse over the electrodes to transmit data. It would work a lot like morse code only this I believe would be more efficent because there are more possibile unique patterns possible with four electrodes.
Here is a breakdown of events in the case of transmitting a word.
1. Program reads word and sends data to controller over USB.
2. Controller picks up data and encodes it into the correct sequence of pulses.
3. Controller transmits sequence over wires to electrodes.
4. Electrodes produce the pattern of sensation at the contact points.
5. My mind translates the sequence of letters into the word.
Of course this system is one-way as only the machine can transmit data to me using this method. The unknown factor is how well or even if I will be able to translate these signals, it will be a conscous effort. I believe with enough time and training it may become intuitive but this is mere speculation on my part. There is also the possibility that the contact points are to close and I would not be able to differentiate the signals, this would take some testing to determine.
I believe this system could also be used to provide additional input paths for wearable computing projects.
I chose USB as my computer-to-controller interface because it is powered. It could provide the low-voltages to make this system work. I would like the jacks themselves to be something like A/V cables, the reason I like these instead of RJ-45 or similar jacks becase if they get tugged they will just pull free with minimal pain on my part.
The most mysterious part of this whole project is my idea of the controller box. I know that this is possible but I have no idea on the specifics. It would have to be able to switch voltages based on the data sent to it through USB. Im not sure if the 5V USB puts out would be enough to sense or even to much, I will have to test it out. I doubt I would be able to build this on my own but if I can get the idea down there are people I know locally able to produce custom electronics.
I believe the hardest part of this whole idea is the control software. Beyond HTML, XML, and some light C/C++ I have little knowledge of programming. It will probably take me a great deal of time to research/develop it on my own without any assisstance if at all. If your interested let me know
Well this is the idea in a nutshell really. Please feel free to pick out any holes in my logic, the tattoo ink might be affecting my thought processes
I know this is sort of an odd place to post this sort of idea, but hell, if this isn't a [H]ard idea I don't know what is.
