The Sixth Sense Gadget

One of the things that the researchers of Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT) is doing right now is the portable “sixth
sense” device powered by commercial products that can seamlessly
channel Internet information into daily routines.

Basically, the device can turn any surface into a touch-screen for
for computing, controlled by simple hand gestures.

Not only that, the gadget can also take photographs if a user
frames a scene with his or her hands, or project a watch face with
the proper time on a wrist if the user makes a circle there with a
finger.

You might wonder how does it work, well, it's not as complicated as
what you might have thought it is. As for the first version of the
gadget, the MIT wizards cobbled a Web camera, a battery-powered
projector and a mobile telephone into a gizmo that can be worn like
jewelry. Then, signals from the camera and projector are relayed to
smart phones with Internet connections.

Aside from taking photographs, what's cool even more about this
gadget is that it can recognize items on store shelves, retrieving
and projecting information about products or even providing quick
signals to let users know which choices suit their tastes.

The gadget can look at an airplane ticket and let the user know
whether the flight is on time.Thus, it can recognize books in a book
store and then project reviews or author information from the
Internet onto blank pages.

The gizmo can recognize articles in newspapers, retrieve the latest
related stories or video from the Internet and play them on pages.

With the gadget, you can use any surface, including your hand if
nothing else is available, and interact with the data.

But according to the MIT researchers, they are still improving the
gadget to make it perfect. Thus, according to Patty Maes of MIT, "Maybe
in ten years we will be here with the ultimate sixth-sense brain
implant."