[Emi Tamaki], [Miyaki Takashi] and [Jun Rekimoto] at the University of Tokyo came up with a device called the PossessedHand that electrically stimulates muscles to train someone to play a the koto, a Japanese stringed instrument.

The PossessedHand ‘triggers’ individual fingers with precisely placed electrodes. Sixteen joints in the hand can be controlled independently by placing one electrode on the muscle that controls the joint and a ground electrode on the tendon of that muscle. Users of the PossessedHand reported no pain from the device when 30 Volts were sent though the electrodes.

The paper (PDF warning) goes into detail about the reactions of the users of the PossessedHand. While a few subjects thought the PossessedHand was scary, many enjoyed it – one subject even thought it was possible to fly a helicopter without training. While this isn’t downloading a rotary wing licence into your brain like The Matrix, the PossessedHand did prove to be a useful tool for learning the fingering for the koto. You can see a video of the PossessedHand in action in the New Scientist story.

[via New Scientist]

Gather your friends round the living room for a head-to-head quiz game. This one’s not quite as nice as you might think. Get an answer wrong and you’re going to get the Venkman treatment thanks to the stored electricity in a disposable camera flash circuit. [Israel] runs the game questions from a Windows machine, and uses a set of four USB joystick buzzers that let each contestant ring in. They all wear a cuff that houses electrodes for negative-reinforcement upon an incorrect answer. Since every contestant answers each question it won’t be long before you hear the uncomfortable yelp of failure from your guests. This seems a little bit more fair than shocking people for not calming their minds, but the video from that hack is still one of our all-time favorites.

Culture Shock II, a robot by the Lawrence Tech team, first caught our eye due to its unique drive train. Upon further investigation we found a very well built robot with a ton of unique features.

The first thing we noticed about CultureShockII are the giant 36″ wheels. The wheel assemblies are actually unicycles modified to be driven by the geared motors on the bottom. The reason such large wheels were chosen was to keep the center of gravity well below the axle, providing a very self stabilizing robot. The robot also has two casters with a suspension system to act as dampers and stabilizers in the case of shocks and inclines. Pictured Below.

The next thing we noticed were the strange semi-circles mounted above the casters. Upon further inquiry we found that the robot uses 10 lasers to project cross-hairs on the ground so that it can use its stereo vision at night.

The robot has two stereo vision cameras from Videre, a brand that has been very popular at this year’s IGVC. The cameras overlap and provide the AI with a pixel-associated 3d point map. The team also came up with a clever way to adjust the camera to different lighting situations with two “candy canes” sticking out into the robot’s field of vision. The robot can look at these and use an algorithm to adjust the colors according. This helps greatly with white line detection. (The robots must stay within two white lines painted about 10 feet apart on the grass.)

Along with the stereo vision the robot also features an Omnistar-VBS enabled gps capable of sub meter accuracy and a digital compass. Aside from the driver software for the cameras, the robot is written completely in Java. The AI uses frame-by-frame mapping. Each frame the robot sets an objective out in the distance and moves towards it. In the next frame the robot checks to see if that objective is still reachable and moves towards it, otherwise it changes its path. To get around objects the robot hugs the obstacle until it is behind it. The system is a hybrid of mapping and reactive AI.

The robot’s brain is a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad running 32bit windows. It has a solid state drive and 4GB of ram. One cool thing to note is that all of the sensors and micro-controllers run off the ATX power supply for the computer. Instead of using an inverter they found a suitable 12V ATX supply.

The rear control panel is pretty neat too. It has a touch screen, switches for all the main components, and status LEDs. Below it you can see the very back of the computer, housed in a shuttle style thermaltake case.

If you take the panel on the front off you are greeted with a view of the robot’s power and signal distribution. The green board is a Roboteq AX3500 which runs the motors and manages the PID feedback. The robot has 70lbs of sealed lead acid batteries in its base which allows it to run for approximately two hours. The remote E-stop (required by the rules) for this robot is actually a remote garage door opener hacked into turning the robot on and off.

We’ll finish with a shot of happy* engineers working away on their robots.

*depending on the state of their robot

Day One Report

Reader [Eric] sent us a powerfully informative, yet super simple hack for the MindFlex toy. Don’t worry, it’s not another worthless shock ‘game’, And it’s using an actual interface instead of the built-in LEDs.

With two wires for the serial protocol, and an Arduino, you’ll be able to view “signal strength, attention, meditation, delta, theta, low alpha, high alpha, low beta, high beta, low gamma, high gamma” brainwaves. While it’s not medical grade, it’s a lot more intuitive than previous interfaces.

The original intent was for a system called MentalBlock, but we’re wondering what would you do with brainwave data?

We love to see eloquent hacks but this isn’t one of them. [Aaron] and his fellow sadists are using a Mindflex game with an electric shocker. If your brain is idle you’ll be fine, but too much activity inside the noggin and you’re in for nasty shock to the arm. Take a look at the video (bleeped but probably NSFW) after the break.

We’ve seen the Mindflex before, they’re using its interface in the same ways we’ve seen the Force Trainer used, by tapping into the LEDs. The shocks are provided by a Qkit, so hopefully there’s enough engineering behind it to keep the ‘contestant’ safe.

Hey, isn’t that the Tron Guy?

Update: Just to clarify a bit, This is built by [Nuri]. He offers them for sale (via paypal I see), but it is his work. It would be nice to see the design, but I can see some reasons why he might not want to release it to the public.