Time of sense ... electronic

More and more modern and practical products are born. Currently, one of the latest inventions is the creation of electronic senses

Tactile

Professor Victor Zue (Photo: Laborer)

Hiroshi Ishii, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor, made a big stir by saying that a program has been created that allows one to touch others through . computers. It means that through computers, we can still feel the cool skin of a baby dozens or hundreds of miles away from me! Professor Ishii's invention is called 'inTouch', based on feedback techniques. Using compatible devices, two people in two remote places can 'touch' each other when communicating with each other. Also at MIT, in 1993, scientists Kenneth Salisbury and Thomas Massie of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory invented the PHANToM Haptic Interface, allowing users to 'sense' information in a computer. To use the PHANToM Haptic Interface technique, one finger is placed on the tip of the finger tip (like the object used to avoid needle stabbing when sewing). All activities of this finger will appear on the screen inside a virtual space filled with various 'blocks' of shapes (square, triangle .). When the finger enters that virtual space and then touches (for example) the top of a triangle, one immediately senses the sharp contours of this triangle. Currently, PHANToM Haptic Interface technology has been applied by Pennsylvania Medical University to practice internship surgery students.

Smell

Medieval physicians used to know how to diagnose patients by sniffing breaths (some diseases such as liver often stink on the mouth). Today, Dr. George Dodd (Scotland) also uses the same method, but his nose is an electronic nose. A few years ago, an electronic olfactory organ was developed - including extremely sensitive electrochemical sensors (electrochemical) connected to a super-powerful computer - used to detect explosives. or blood alcohol concentration. Based on this theory, Dodd created electronic chips and "trained" them to recognize each specific smell. The device recognizes Dodd's smell so small that it can be attached to the telephone receiver (connected directly to the computer). When they want to check their status, the patient simply tells the phone to allow the computer to analyze the increase or decrease of the disease. Dr. Dodd hopes that in about five years, the clinics will all have electronic noses, and everyone can equip themselves with this small credit card to regularly monitor their health. me

Taste

Like the sense of smell, taste is one of the most complex feelings. Just like the surface of the moon, the tongue has about 8,000-10,000 jagged taste buds, each containing about 50-75 chemical sensing points. These perceived points are extremely short: about 10 days die to be replaced by the next generation. From this basic theory, Professor Robert Bradley of the University of Michigan (USA) has created an artificial tongue that functions to recognize almost real tongue taste. The electronic blade is made of a 4 mm diameter silicon dish, on which there are many tiny holes that each hole is connected to a computer. After that, one separated a taste cell neuron to implant it on a silicon disk and thus an electronic tongue was born. Bradley's goal is to use an electronic tongue to detect the mechanism of taste recognition and the role of the brain in identifying flavors (such as how the brain perceives the difference between salt or sugar).

Feeling

Professor Victor Zue of MIT's Computer Science Laboratory said he has successfully invented a machine that can recognize human speech. Try taking the seat in front of Jupiter (Zue's machine) and asking for weather conditions in Paris or New York, Jupiter will answer each location correctly. Asked about the humidity in Tokyo or the weekend forecast in Rio, Jupiter also answered. With a vocabulary of about 1,500 words related to the weather, Jupiter can only discuss the sun and rain. Consisting of four software, Jupiter recognizes the voice and then automatically translates it into ' word hypothesis' based on the calculation of possible linguistic abilities. Once determined, the second software will enter to find out the meaning of the word assumption. Then, Jupiter scanned (scanned) the US National Meteorological Department reports on the Internet to find the information being requested and responded.

Sight

Imagine this, a person walking in a strange city, not knowing how to find a restaurant that he had an appointment with a friend. After typing a few commands into the small computer on his belt, he saw the city map showing up not on the screen in front of him but in the air (!), Along with the shortest route instructions. In the end, he found the right way but was puzzled about which restaurant. At that time, he lightly touched the glasses. The restaurant wants to come out suddenly. So he just went straight to where he needed to go, where my friend was waiting . Something, no one knew that the person who had just told me was blind! That's the prospect that Tom Furness hopes to turn into reality in the near future. As director of the University of Washington's Interactive Technical Laboratory, Furness has been studying 'vision machines' for 30 years. As a result, the 'virtual retina display' has been released (Virtual Retinal Display - VRD, the tool can 'draw' images directly onto the retina). VRD consists of a pair of glasses connected directly to a small computer that looks like a briefcase. To create images for blind people to use this device, people pre-import a series of images into the computer. To view the route to the restaurant, the user types the command into the machine by simple operation.

Hoang Minh