TED2009: “Sixth Sense” device projects information on any surface, including your skin

The researchers at the MIT Media Lab are focused on human-machine relationships and on finding new ways people can use technology to their benefit. Sometimes their projects seem like the work of some wizards.

Pattie Maes’ “sixth sense” device set off a buzz when she showed it at the TED conference recently — even though it so early stage that it’s more hack then full prototype.

Maes and graduate student Pranav Mistry created the WUW - “Wear Ur World” – system using about $300 worth of store bought components: a small wearable camera, battery operated projector, a smart phone and colored plastic marker caps that are worn on the users fingers.

It’s a bit clunky — you couldn’t pass it off as jewelry — but still cool.

Maes, an associate professor, set out to create a device that would make it easy for people access and use networked information — our “sixth sense” — in making everyday decisions. The project’s website says it frees data from its traditional digital confines and “releases it into the world, seamlessly integrating information and reality.”

Photo/MIT Media Lab

What?

At TED, Maes showed users projecting relevant information, delivered from the Internet-enabeled smart phone, on a variety of surfaces. A user can manipulate the data by moving his capped fingers, which are tracked by the camera.

For instance, a user can access Amazon ratings, or reviews, about a book he picks up in a bookstore, check the status of his flight by aiming the device at his ticket or check the time on a watch face projected on his wrist.

“You can use any surface, including your hand if nothing else is available, and interact with the data,” Maes said. “It’s very much a work in progress. Maybe in 10 years we will be here with the ultimate sixth-sense brain implant.”

You can find out more about Maes’ work at the website of the lab’s fluid interfaces research group, which she directs, or see images of the “sixth sense” device in action.