
AsianScientist (Apr. 2, 2018) – If you’ve watched the TV series Black Mirror, you would have seen any number of technologies that blur the barriers between man and machine. Of course, none of what is shown is real, but writers of the show could very well have been inspired by Japanese maverick inventor Jun Rekimoto of the University of Tokyo.
Rekimoto is widely known as the deputy director of Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo. In 2007, he took a leap into academia by joining the University of Tokyo as director of the human augmentation lab at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies. He and his research team have invented some seriously cool technologies such as the ChameleonMask—a device that you pay a surrogate human being to strap on to attend meetings on your behalf.
Here are eight of the coolest gadgets and gizmos from the Laboratoire Révolutionnaire et Romantique.
- 1. ChameleonMask
- 2. HoverBall
- 3. AquaCAVE
- 4. StratoJump
To fulfill your dream of attending meetings in pajamas
ChameleonMask is a telepresence system that displays a remote user’s face on another person. Unlike current telepresence systems that are designed to display the remote user’s face on a robot, ChameleonMask uses a real human person as a surrogate.
How it works: The surrogate wears a display monitor that provides a real-time feed of the remote user’s face and voice. The surrogate mimics the remote user by following his or her directives.
“Our experiments showed that the surrogate tended to be regarded as the remote user,” Rekimoto’s research team reported. “The surrogate also tended to fulfill the director’s request and felt positive about being the surrogate.”
When David Beckham challenges you to a kick-off
When playing team sports, players with substantial differences in skill may find it hard to enjoy a game together. HoverBall could help level the playing field. Not only can HoverBall’s flight ability be freely programmed, it can also be modified to overcome the laws of motion.
How it works: With HoverBall technology, basic actions such as kicking, throwing or hitting can be programmed. New ‘ball-playing vocabulary’ such as hovering, anti-gravity, proximity or remote manipulation can also be introduced to expand the number of ways people can interact with a ball.
“We have named such programmability ‘imaginary dynamics,’ and we consider it to be a basic principle when applying information technology to enhance sports games,” Rekimoto’s research team said.
Making swimming laps an adventure
As swimming practice often requires monotonous and repetitive actions, staying motivated may prove to be difficult for many people. The AquaCAVE system enhances the swimming experience with a cave-like, immersive environment.
How it works: AquaCAVE surrounds a swimmer using rear-projection acrylic walls. The swimmer wears a pair of goggles with LCD shutter glasses, and a pair of infrared cameras installed in the pool tracks the swimmer’s head position.
“Swimmers can be immersed into imaginary scenes such as coral reefs and outer space. The system can also provide competitive swimming training by projecting record lines or swimming forms,” the research team reported.
For those who want to bungee jump but are too chicken
StratoJump provides the experience of high-altitude jumping at the edge of space. As the jumping effect is linked to the participant’s head motion, the participant can feel as if he is actually jumping from that altitude.
How it works: The participant wears a head-mounted display that shows the user scenes from the ground level to the stratosphere.
“The spherical 360-degree video was recorded by a combination of six wide-angle cameras lifted by helium-filled balloons that reached heights of 32,000 meters. The video was then post-processed with video stabilization,” the team reported.