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Tap On, Tap Off -- The Tapper
from the as-seen-on-TV dept
Instead of moving things around on a vibrating table using calculated oscillations, how about turning almost any surface into a touch-sensitive interface by measuring vibrations and back-calculating the location of where they originated. By using time-reversal techniques, sounds and vibrations that are picked up by a few sensors can detect, for instance, where someone is tapping on a desktop. This could be used for such applications as switching on/off different devices (watch out, Clapper!). Similar techniques, using several well-placed microphones, could detect where a sniper is shooting from. The computation to do these tasks in real-time is still a bit beyond practical. At the same time, the accuracy (and filtering out interfering sounds) probably needs to be improved, but the technique certainly could eventually be applied to a lot of interesting applications.
Reader Comments
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Wax On Wax Off Daniel-san
What about the same technique in reverse, which takes advantage of well-placed vibrations that harmonize into a giant rogue wave? Then sky scrapers, bridges, and highway overpasses can be brought down with a few well-placed speakers by scr1pt k1dd3s.
As it is, rogue waves can happen spontaneously at sea, if waves overlap the right way.
http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/257.html
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Re: Wax On Wax Off Daniel-san
As the link says, supertankers can be brought down at sea, based on a sensitive dependence on initial conditions -- if it can be computed, tossing a few tennis balls into the ocean at the right places can cause tsunamis that will bury cities.
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Already patented
If I'm not mistaken this was patented some years ago. Certainly there is a touch screen technique that relies on this technology.
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Re: Already patented
So this is basically "Touch" without the "Screen" - a step backwards
Where's the tactile response? Oh yeah, no one wants that anymore, that's why "Touch Screens" have taken over the world - Not!
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Finding snipers
As far as locating snipers (gunshots), this system already exists.
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