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Wear the suit that gets your Spidey-sense tingling
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One Per Cent
FOR Peter Parker, it was a tingling sensation that alerted him to an imminent threat. Now anyone can pretend to be Spider-Man by simply donning a suit that lets you feel how close you are to a nearby object. It can even let the wearer navigate with their eyes closed. The suit, called SpiderSense and built by Victor Mateevitsi of the University of Illinois in Chicago has small robotic arms packaged in modules with microphones that send out and pick up ultrasonic reflections from objects. When the ultrasound detects someone moving closer to the microphone, the arms respond by exerting a growing pressure on the body. Seven of these modules are distributed across the suit to give the wearer as near to 360 degree ultrasound coverage as possible. “When someone is punching Spider-Man, he feels the sensation and can avoid it. Our suit is the same concept,” says Mateevitsi. SpiderSense could help blind people to find their way more easily, he says. Mateevitsi tested the suit out on students, getting them to stand outside on campus, blindfolded, and “feel” for approaching attackers. Each wearer had ninja cardboard throwing stars to use whenever they sensed someone approaching them. “Ninety five per cent of the time they were
able to sense someone approaching and throw the star at them,” says Mateevitsi. “I’m very excited about this,” says Gershon Dublon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who also works on augmenting parts of the human body. Mateevitsi’s work is a step on the road to giving humans truly integrated extrasensory perception, says Dublon. Mateevitsi wants to use the suit, or just a few sensors on the arms and back, to boost cyclists’ awareness of other traffic on the road. SpiderSense
“The SpiderSense suit could boost cyclists’ awareness of other vehicles on the road” is due to be presented at the Augmented Human conference in Stuttgart, Germany, in March. The team now plans to add more sensors to the suit to increase its resolution. “We humans have the senses that we are born with and we can’t extend them,” Mateevisti says. “But there are some threats which are very deadly, but we can’t sense them, like radiation. Electronic sensors can feel those threats.” The team also plans to begin trials of SpiderSense with visually impaired people. Hal Hodson n
Stewart Cook/Rex Features
Back off, my Spidey senses tell me you’re too close
And the Oscar goes to… The speculation over who will win Oscars has an algorithmic edge to it this year. Inspired by statistics guru Nate Silver’s success in predicting the US election result, a number of organisations are using data-mining to guess who will win. The Motion Picture Association of America site, thecredits.org, for example, is counting “positive mentions” of actors and movies in reviews, on Twitter, on Facebook and in movie forum threads. With a week to go, the site has Ben Affleck’s hostage drama Argo winning best picture.
“We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing” President Barack Obama speaks after signing an executive order to make companies running critical US infrastructure share information on the cyberattacks they deal with on a daily basis
Bring the day’s news into your game Seen it in the news? Now play it. Multiplay.io allows 3D depictions of news events to be added to cellphone or tablet games. This HTML5 games creator, developed by a UK start-up of the same name, would allow news agencies to create 3D animations – of last week’s meteor explosion over Russia, for example – that could be pasted in above the game action.
imagebroker/Alamy
How to tweet a riot In August 2011, riots broke out across England. While looters roamed the streets, the police took to Twitter to advise local residents what to do. The first analysis of how it was done shows that different police forces took different approaches. Manchester police tweeted in a voice-of-the-people style, whereas London’s police were more instructional. It was a new way to police a riot – and there’s no agreement yet on the best method. The work will be discussed at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris in April.
For breaking tech news go to: newscientist.com/onepercent –The next best thing– 23 February 2013 | NewScientist | 21
One Per Cent
FOR Peter Parker, it was a tingling sensation that alerted him to an imminent threat. Now anyone can pretend to be Spider-Man by simply donning a suit that lets you feel how close you are to a nearby object. It can even let the wearer navigate with their eyes closed. The suit, called SpiderSense and built by Victor Mateevitsi of the University of Illinois in Chicago has small robotic arms packaged in modules with microphones that send out and pick up ultrasonic reflections from objects. When the ultrasound detects someone moving closer to the microphone, the arms respond by exerting a growing pressure on the body. Seven of these modules are distributed across the suit to give the wearer as near to 360 degree ultrasound coverage as possible. “When someone is punching Spider-Man, he feels the sensation and can avoid it. Our suit is the same concept,” says Mateevitsi. SpiderSense could help blind people to find their way more easily, he says. Mateevitsi tested the suit out on students, getting them to stand outside on campus, blindfolded, and “feel” for approaching attackers. Each wearer had ninja cardboard throwing stars to use whenever they sensed someone approaching them. “Ninety five per cent of the time they were
able to sense someone approaching and throw the star at them,” says Mateevitsi. “I’m very excited about this,” says Gershon Dublon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who also works on augmenting parts of the human body. Mateevitsi’s work is a step on the road to giving humans truly integrated extrasensory perception, says Dublon. Mateevitsi wants to use the suit, or just a few sensors on the arms and back, to boost cyclists’ awareness of other traffic on the road. SpiderSense
“The SpiderSense suit could boost cyclists’ awareness of other vehicles on the road” is due to be presented at the Augmented Human conference in Stuttgart, Germany, in March. The team now plans to add more sensors to the suit to increase its resolution. “We humans have the senses that we are born with and we can’t extend them,” Mateevisti says. “But there are some threats which are very deadly, but we can’t sense them, like radiation. Electronic sensors can feel those threats.” The team also plans to begin trials of SpiderSense with visually impaired people. Hal Hodson n
Stewart Cook/Rex Features
Back off, my Spidey senses tell me you’re too close
And the Oscar goes to… The speculation over who will win Oscars has an algorithmic edge to it this year. Inspired by statistics guru Nate Silver’s success in predicting the US election result, a number of organisations are using data-mining to guess who will win. The Motion Picture Association of America site, thecredits.org, for example, is counting “positive mentions” of actors and movies in reviews, on Twitter, on Facebook and in movie forum threads. With a week to go, the site has Ben Affleck’s hostage drama Argo winning best picture.
“We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing” President Barack Obama speaks after signing an executive order to make companies running critical US infrastructure share information on the cyberattacks they deal with on a daily basis
Bring the day’s news into your game Seen it in the news? Now play it. Multiplay.io allows 3D depictions of news events to be added to cellphone or tablet games. This HTML5 games creator, developed by a UK start-up of the same name, would allow news agencies to create 3D animations – of last week’s meteor explosion over Russia, for example – that could be pasted in above the game action.
imagebroker/Alamy
How to tweet a riot In August 2011, riots broke out across England. While looters roamed the streets, the police took to Twitter to advise local residents what to do. The first analysis of how it was done shows that different police forces took different approaches. Manchester police tweeted in a voice-of-the-people style, whereas London’s police were more instructional. It was a new way to police a riot – and there’s no agreement yet on the best method. The work will be discussed at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris in April.
For breaking tech news go to: newscientist.com/onepercent –The next best thing– 23 February 2013 | NewScientist | 21