Designer Diana Eng is on the cutting edge of integrating electronics with high fashion, as seen in the above footage from one of her shows. While most of us can’t go out and pick up an LED-enhanced Eng gown or tuxedo just yet, advancements in materials and electronics, including small batteries and conductive thread, make her designs possible.

It’s a short matter of time before this clothing, embedded with lights that respond to sound, shows up in dance clubs around the world. But fusing electronics with clothing isn’t all for show - there are also practical applications for the technology:

Take the M-dress, designed by CuteCircuit to solve the problem of digging through a purse in a dark lounge to find a cell phone. With a SIM card embedded in the dress’s tag, a microphone and speaker in the sleeve, and gesture-recognition software, the wearer can answer calls by simply raising her hand to her ear. There is no external device and no button to press—the movement alone activates a sensor that answers and ends calls. Our bodies become part of the communication tool, mediated by little more than fabric. “When our relation to something nonbiological is that close, and we’re secure in our access to information, then we feel the information is part of our mind,” says Clark.

(Via The Atlantic)

Researchers in South Korea have successfully transmitted data at broadband speeds between two points on a person’s arm using the body itself as a conduit. The technology is very energy efficient when compared to alternatives like wireless data transfer, and therefore may lend itself to health applications:

It is difficult to monitor vital signs, such as blood sugar and electrical activity of the heart, in a person going about their everyday lives because it means either covering them in snaking wires connected to a recording device, or using wireless transmission.

“If we use wireless for each of these vital signs we would need many batteries,” says study co-author Sang-Hoon Lee of Korea University in Seoul. A network transmitting through the skin would cut energy needs by roughly 90 per cent, he says.

Future versions of the technology could be implanted beneath the skin for long-term monitoring purposes.

World-famous movie critic Roger Ebert  lost his ability to speak, eat or drink when he was treated for thyroid cancer and had his jaw removed in 2006. Now, a Scottish company called CereProc has literally given Ebert his voice back via software that uses old recordings of his voice to determine speech patterns and how he would pronounce certain words, and then used this information to re-create his voice (which, Ebert notes, is currently in “beta”):

Before I lost my voice due to cancer-related surgery, I’d recorded commentary tracks for some movies on DVD: “Citizen Kane,” “Casablanca,” “Floating Weeds,” “Dark City” and, ah, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.” These tracks had been recorded separately from the movies, so they could be edited to fit scenes. They might be “pure” audio. I asked two friends of mine, Ronnie Sass of Warner Bros. and Kim Hendrickson of the Criterion Collection, if they still had the original digital recordings. They rummaged in warehouses and found they did. So did New Line and 20th Century-Fox, studios for which I’d also recorded commentary tracks.

This began a back-and-forth process with CereProc, which had to transcribe every recording with perfect accuracy so they could locate every word. The “normal person” may use 5,000 words, not all of them on the same day. A college professor may use 15,000. Shakespeare used more than 25,000, but he was making up a lot of them as he went along.

Anyway, CereProc didn’t need to hear me speaking a specific word in order for my “voice” to say it. They needed lots of words to determine the general idea of how I might say a word. They transcribed and programmed and tweaked and fiddled, and early this February, sent me the files for a beta version of my voice. I played it for Chaz, and she said, yes, she could tell it was me. For one thing it knew exactly how I said “I.”

Ebert will be debuting his new speaking voice, which he’s dubbed “Roger, Jr.,” on the Oprah Winfrey Show tomorrow, March 2.

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The “universal translator” is a crucial plot device in science fiction, giving aliens from far off worlds the ability to, at least from the perspective of the protagonists and audience, speak perfect English. They’re what enable a multi-species crew to effectively serve together on the Enterprise. The “babel fish” enabled Arthur Dent to understand the many races that populated the Milky Way in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Today we learned that Google is working on what could be considered a universal translator for Earthlings, which will be built into a mobile phone. It makes sense for Google, who have made significant strides in both text translation technology and voice recognition.

“We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time,” Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services told the outlet.

The idea behind Google’s plan is simple: when a user speaking one language says something into a phone, Google’s translator software, which would be running on the recipient’s phone, would interpret what the person said, translate it into the recipient’s language, and recite it back in that second language. In order to limit conversational pauses, the company apparently plans to translate as phrases are spoken, rather that waiting until each sentence is completed.

Google hopes to make the application available “in a couple years.”

Even as undoubtedly clunky the first iteration of this technology will prove to be, it will be a huge step toward bringing people together from around the world. Imagine how much easier it will be to book foreign travel plans, or conduct business with overseas suppliers?

We all know video games are a waste of time and rot your brain, right? Not so, says the U.S. Office of Naval Research. In fact, adult gamers can see increased “perceptual abilities,” increased short-term memory, longer focus and expanded field of vision compared to non-gamers. Ray Perez, a program officer at the ONR’s warfighter performance department, said that they’ve found gamers “perform 10 to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability than normal people that are non-game players.”

While there is empirical evidence of increased brain plasticity in video gamers, Perez said, the process behind it is not well understood. His belief, he said, is that the neural networks involved in video gaming become more pronounced, have increased blood flow, and become more synchronized with other neural networks in the brain.

“We’re now looking for the underlying neural mechanisms that are responsible for these changes in behavior and in abilities,” Perez said. “We’re using various kinds of neural imaging techniques like [functional magnetic resonance imaging] that identify different areas of the brain that show activity when you’re performing certain tasks, and we can begin to look at what area of the brain is active during the processing of video information.

“We think that these games increase your executive control, or your ability to focus and attend to stimuli in the outside world,” he added.

Given these findings, the ONR is looking for ways to incorporate “video game technology” into learning tools, ranging from PDAs to simulators and virtual environments.

This story got me thinking of a recent feature in Wired about how we’re seeing a generation of NFL players who were raised with John Madden Football, a very in-depth football simulator. These players are taking strategies they learned in the game and applying them on the field, to the point where coaches are actually encouraging their teams to play Madden in their off-time to learn more about football strategy. Some coaches attribute the video game to the high level of success young quarterbacks are seeing in the NFL, who traditionally needed a few years to learn enough to perform well in the league.

Similarly, we’re also seeing young soldiers who have played military strategy and first-person shooter games their entire lives. The U.S. Army even has its own such game, America’s Army, which it distributes for free for recruiting purposes. Given the military’s increased reliance on unmanned drones and robots, it’s only natural that gamers would take easily to remotely interfacing with these machines. But would, say, and infantryman’s experience with a FPS like Modern Warfare 2 affect the way they actually behave in combat?

With the extremely heavy packs modern soldiers are expected to carry (upwards of 150 pounds), a robotic exoskeleton that  provides support and improves mobility makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, these exoskeletons require a lot of power to function – power that has been provided in the past via gasoline engines or traditional lithium-ion batteries. Gas engines are noisy and stinky, and li-ion batteries run out in a few hours. Not good if you’re in the field and your exoskeleton runs out of juice while you’re carrying hundreds of pounds of gear.

This week Lockheed-Martin announced its Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC) exoskeleton will be powered by fuel cells that will provide power for a full three days, along with charging other electronic gadgets, such as night vision goggles, electronic weapon sights, communications equipment, and so on. From The Register:

Rich Russell, Lockheed bigwig, describes this as a “whole system” approach. “With proper power management systems, the HULC can be used to recharge critical equipment while carrying heavy combat loads on an extended mission,” he says.

Stripping the batteries from a soldier or spec-ops trooper’s load would free up the entire mighty carrying capacity of the HULC for more attractive options such as armour, weapons etc. We here on the military crazytech desk have previously pointed out that remote-controlled powered gun mounts as light as 55lb can be had, able to handle various heavy weapons normally requiring a tripod or bipod for dismounted infantry use. These would be ideal for installation above a HULC-wearer’s shoulder, and easily set up so as to train the big gun to follow a head-mounted monocle pointing rig of some sort.

Other accessories already offered include an armour-plated “ballistic shield” to be mounted in front of a wearer’s body, or “heating or cooling systems, sensors and other custom attachments”.

(Via Engadget)

At the moment, most augmented reality applications run on mobile phones, which is actually a good fit – modern cell phones have nice screens, cameras and enough processing power to make this a practical platform. Holding your phone out in front of your face, however, is far some seamless.

I have no doubt that at some point AR will compliment what we see by feeding us information on people, places and things that enter our field of vision. Until we use some sort of contact lens or neural/retinal implant that accomplishes this, we may have to make due with glasses like the Wrap 920AR, which debuted this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

From the press release:

With the new Wrap 920AR, users can view the real-world environment and computer-generated imagery seamlessly mixed together; allowing video game characters to jump out of the TV and come to life in your living room, or magazines and books with animated links back to the web in real time.

The stereo camera pair delivers a single 1504 x 480 side-by-side image that can be viewed in 3D stereoscopic video, while the video eyewear provides an unprecedented 67-inch display as seen from 10 feet. The Wrap 920AR also includes a 6 Degree-of-Freedom Tracker, which allows for absolute accuracy of roll pitch and yaw and also X, Y and Z positioning in 3D space.

The glasses are set to retail for $799.99.

(Via Engadget)

With his books and essays about the singularity, it’s easy to forget that Ray Kurzweil built his name on his very successful inventions. Therefore, when he unveils a new invention, it’s a big deal. His latest venture is the Blio e-reader software, which will be distributed for free to a variety of platforms including the PC and iPhone. The software looks to have a very slick interface and can read books aloud via a synthesized voice – a clutch feature for visually impaired readers.

Here Kurzweil and (who I assume is) a business partner show off some of Blio’s key features, including the aforementioned text-to-speech, embedded Web browsers contained within the page of a book, 3D page turning, and more.

Blio is set to launch in February and will be made available for free.