Artist Wafaa Bilal underwent a “very hard” surgical operation to implant a digital camera mount on the back of his head, upon which a “third eye” will snap photos every minute for a full year, uploading them automatically to a website and a museum in Qatar.

“I’m interested in these corners of our life we don’t pay attention to,” says Bilal. “To me, it’s like, that’s part of the project. That’s part of the mundane image.”

The camera will go live beginning December 15, 2010.

When Microsoft recently released its Xbox 360 peripheral, called Kinect, they intended it to be primarily used for gaming. However, a number of enterprising hardware hackers have re-purposed Kinect for a variety of non-gaming uses, ranging from robotic telepresence to augmented reality shadow puppets. Earlier this week, the wizards at Evoluce, who design and create multi-touch and gesture based displays, released video of their work with the Kinect. While we still have a way to go on the holographic display piece, they’ve made significant progress on creating a workable interface that responds to gestures. They’re not too far off from what was imagined in Minority Report, particularly when it comes to navigating a 3D map or sorting a series of images.

(Via Engadget)

Why the Singularity isn’t going to happen (10/16/10) – “That is how Singularity-level technologies work in real life. They solve dire problems, sure. They save lives. But they also create problems we’d never imagined – problems that might have been inconceivable before that Singularity tech was invented.” (io9)

Artificial intelligence has a feel for laboratory science (10/14/10) - “‘The artificial experimenter will provide a tool for scientists, which will not only allow them to reduce experimentation costs, but will also allow them to redirect their time from monotonous characterisation experiments, to analysing the results, building theories and determining uses for those results,’ say the researchers in their paper.” (The Engineer)

In New Study, Babies Think A Silvery Robot Is Human, As Long As It Acts Friendly (10/14/10) – “At 18 months old, babies have begun to make conscious delineations between sentient beings and inanimate objects. But as robots get more and more advanced, those decisions may become harder to make. What causes a baby to decide a robot is more than bits of metal? As it turns out, it takes more than humanoid looks–babies rely on social interaction to make that call.” (PopSci)

Scary Smart: The Next Trillion-Dollar Industry (10/12/10) – “I’m convinced the next trillion-dollar industry will be built around all the stuff that makes us smarter. This would include things that go into our bodies–performance-enhancing supplements and drugs, chip implants and the like–and such traditional tools as smartphones, Web search and databases.” (Forbes.com)

Two Days Among The Immortals (10/11/10) - “Exercise, eat healthy and not too much, sleep well, don’t stress out… and you may well live long enough to live forever.” (h+ Magazine)

Yesterday defense contractor Raytheon released the above video for the latest iteration of their XOS 2 exoskeleton, which coincides with the home release of Iron Man 2. The XOS 2 is designed to help military personnel personnel by lightening their loads and assisting with lifting heavy objects, like armaments.

A Raytheon spokesman said he expects to deploy the non-tethered XOS 2, which is powered by an internal combustion engine, in the field in the next “3 – 5 years.”

In the meantime, let’s get working on the rocket boots and repulsor blasters so we can get them online in time for the unveiling of the XOS 3, hmm?

(Via Engadget)

HULC, or Human Universal Load Carrier, is an exoskeleton designed by Lockheed Martin to assist soldiers carrying heavy loads in the field. According to its manufacturer, HULC allows soldiers to carry up to 200 pounds for extended periods of time while preserving the user’s range of movement – including “deep squats, crawls and upper body lifting.”

As you can see in Lockheed’s promotional video above, HULC isn’t a bulky exoskeleton that provides strength in exchange for mobility. Users appear to be able to move quickly and easily even over rough terrain.

The U.S. Army is apparently intrigued by the concept, and this week announced a $1.1 million contract to actually field a few HULC units among active troops. While $1.1 million is a relative drop in the bucket as far as military spending goes, it may foretell a future in which assistive exoskeletons become common in the military for logistics staff and even soldiers engaged in combat.

New Zealand firm Rex Bionics took a different approach with their “robotic legs,” which are designed to allow the disabled to walk. The company notes the Rex is not intended to be a wheelchair replacement, but is instead a way to augment a chair – for instance, when needing to travel up and down stairs or access items stored at a standing height.

Having been in development for the last seven years. the Rex is expected to go on sale “soon” in its home country and is expected to cost $150,000.

While humans have been known to experience synesthesia by using hallucinogenic drugs or after brain injury, German scientists have been able to re-wire fruit fly larvae to perceive blue light as smelling like bananas. Although normal larvae would retreat from light, these larvae were thus attracted to it:

The work involves activating single receptor neurons out of 28 olfactory neurons. All the olfactory neurons were capable of producing a protein that is activated by light. The researchers had to choose which one to make light-sensitive.

They found they could either activate cells which would normally register repulsive odors and make the flies go away, or they could activate cells that respond to attractive odors like banana, marzipan or glue. Those odors are all present in rotting fruit, which attracts fruit flies.

The neurons send an electrical signal if they are stimulated with blue light, giving the fly larvae the impression that it has smelled something. As shown in the photo, the larvae went toward the light. The point is to study how the neural network operates, the researchers say.

There are certain instances where synesthesia could potentially be beneficial – this list of famous synesthetes seems to indicate it’s especially common (relatively speaking) among musicians.

This video has gone viral, but it’s worth linking here. The expression on eight-month old Jonathan’s face when he hears for the first time, due to a Cochlear implant, is priceless. A reminder of how technology enhances our lives – and a promise of what’s to come.

(Via Neatorama)

He also provides his opinion on who is helping bring about this potential future:

Ok, so who is working towards this eventuality? Well, if it happens this way, pretty much everybody in the NBIC fields – everybody working on nanotech and biotech and AI and brain science, whether as citizen scientists in a collaborationist project or working for a corporation, or those wacky surrealists at DARPA – they’re all pushing this potentiality forward. Of course, we may have to “hijack the singularity” from them eventually – or even now (think gene patent v. open source bio). But mainly, I think all the people who are engaging in open source collaborationist tinkering and culture, the citizen scientists – particularly the more sophisticated and educated young people that are choosing to invest themselves in “garage” projects – I think they all may be taking us there.

I also think the best, smartest critics and skeptics and SF writers and creators are helping – by problematizing these scenarios in advance, by giving us arguments and narratives that remind us about human behaviors and emotions and political and economic and scientific realities. Brilliant fiction adds to our foresight… our pattern recognition… by playing out dramatic, difficult, dark, challenging, ambiguous or dystopian scenarios based on similar technological possibilities.

Like all of R.U. Sirius’ writings, it’s well worth reading.

My grandfather suffered from age-related macular degeneration (ARMD), which causes loss of vision over time. By the time he passed away in his late 70s, he was almost blind. ARMD progresses from the “inside” of your visual field to the outside, so those affected are unable to see that which they are looking at directly. In some ways, the effects are the opposite of an eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa (RP), which causes sufferers to lose peripheral vision first, creating a “tunnel vision” effect once the disease is sufficiently advanced.

Because I have a relative that suffered from ARMD, I’m at a 50 percent risk of developing the condition sometime in my life – as do my father, brother, aunts and uncles.

Based on my grandfather’s experience, macular degeneration can be especially frustrating because, although otherwise in good shape both mentally and physically, it becomes difficult or impossible to read, drive, easily watch television or recognize faces. I’m sure other progressive diseases that lead to vision loss are similarly frustrating.

In part because I have a personal stake in seeing treatments and workarounds developed for diseases like ARMD, I was glad to hear that Australian researchers have developed a retinal implant for people with ARMD and RP that will enable them to at least recognize faces and read large-type print:

The device, which is currently undergoing testing, consists of a miniature camera mounted on glasses that captures visual input, transforming it into electrical signals that directly stimulate surviving neurons in the retina. The implant will enable recipients to perceive points of light in the visual field that the brain can then reconstruct into an image.

The research team will next focus on development of a commercial implant that can be placed in the back of the eye and “respond to wireless transmission of vision.”

(Source: ScienceBlog / Image: Bionic Vision Australia)

Lance-Corporal Craig Lundberg was blinded while serving in Iraq when he sustained injuries from a rocket propelled grenade (RPG). Although he said he felt lucky make it home, he returned without his sight.

Because Lundberg had been normal sighted before losing his vision, the British Ministry of Defense recognized him as an ideal candidate for an experimental device, called a BrainPort, that gives him the ability to navigate and recognize high contrast shapes and images using his tongue.

The BrainPort system consists of a pair of sunglasses equipped with a camera, which sends images to a hand-held device. The device, in turn, converts the images to “stimulation patterns” and sends them to the mouthpiece, which contains “hundreds of electrodes.” The mouthpiece is held against the tongue, where the patterns are produced as electric pulses that Lundberg has learned to interpret:

“You get lines and shapes of things, it sees in black and white so you get a two dimensional image on your tongue, it’s a bit like a pins and needles sensation,” he said.

“It’s only a prototype, but the potential to change my life is massive, it’s got a lot of potential to advance things for blind people.

“One of the things it has enabled me to do is pick up objects straight away, I can reach out and pick them up when before I would be fumbling around to feel for them.”

Since the BrainPort is in the prototype stage, it prevents users from speaking normally while the mouthpiece, or “lollipop,” is in use. Designers say future versions will be smaller and could potentially be permanently implanted in the mouth for “more natural use.”

(Via Neatorama)

(Image via BBC)