February 1, 2004 17:51 | Cyborg / Technology

Phillip Torrone goes Cyborg jogging

I was gonna write an entry today about how bored i am but Phillip Torrone has given me something to be excited about again. That's twice now... I think I'm gonna owe him!

the portable geek gym...
i was told that i should "get outside" by a coworker since i live in a great area and jog, as opposed to jog on my treadmill. good point i thought, but i still want to be able to view my email, irc, rss feeds. so i started a new project--i have a lightweight pair of glasses with a small lcd screen, connected to a pocket pc (with video out) which is also connected to my phone via bluetooth. i'm adding a bluetooth gps this weekend, so as i jog near certain areas it will play content, for example my application will play a short video with audio about the space needle as i get close to it. obviously i don't think joggers will use this, but there are tons and tons of applications. more photos soon of the entire set up.

portable geek gym, more details, photos and video!
here is the portable geek gym. tiny bluetooth gps velcro'd to my shirt, it talks to a pocket pc, which has a video feed to my sunglasses with lcd screen. also attached, a heart rate monitor, a pedometer, all fed to a health watch via rf, and also a spot watch- to check up on the news and instant messages. optional- my phone, which is used to check email via bluetooth and fed to the glasses which is usually playing the gps feed (maps) or a video. based on my location. it's all really light too- so jogging is still fine.
click here for the video (quicktime version).

i can see what the aibo (robot dog can see)...
i'm playing around with using the sony aibo ers-7 as my eyes for limited periods of time- it's pretty interesting to be downstairs and being able to see what the aibo is seeing. while it is no mars explorer, it's quite a bit of fun.

What's exciting about this is that it demonstrates that the goal of discreet wearable mobile connected computing is getting closer every day. Also it is great to see that others than just Steve Mann and his students are actively pursuing these goals, outside of military and corporate research programs.

The aibo thing is just computer-mediated reality/consciousness throwing fun. ;)

Comments

As much as I don't like to encourage this sort of behaviour, see also : BlueFOAF


Hehehe, thanks Aaron. :)