New device would fill tooth cavity with phone LONDON (AP) -- Tired of losing your cell phone? Having other people listen in on your conversations? What about all the times you've had to turn it off at public events, or leave it behind while swimming? Two British inventors unveiled a prototype of a device Friday that could solve those problems.
But there's a drawback -- your dentist would have to install it inside one of your molars.
Unofficially known as the "telephone tooth," the device would allow you to receive phone calls, listen to music, even connect to verbal sites on the Internet without anyone nearby hearing a thing.
"It felt strange. It was weird," said 8-year-old Caitlin Caddies, who tried the prototype Friday at the Science Museum in London. "But I'd be delighted to have it if it would allow my friends to call me at night while I was in bed without my parents knowing.
"Would it hurt when the dentist put it in?" she asked.
James Auger, 31, and Jimmy Loizeau, 34, developed the device while enrolled in a master's program at the Royal College of Art in London on the way technology is used today.
So far, no company has announced it is making the device. But Auger and Loizeau have moved to Dublin, Ireland, to work with Media Lab Europe, the European research partner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.
Theoretically, the device would allow spies to receive instructions secretly, or athletes to hear from their coaches while on the field.
Other beneficiaries could include investors and brokers, and sports fanatics who want to be informed the moment their team wins or loses.
However, the device, also known as the "molar mobile," does not allow people to talk back to callers or make outgoing calls.
Auger said the "telephone tooth" is just another device designed to help people better cope with existing technology: like the flight suits developed to allow pilots make tight turns in high-speed warplanes without blacking out.
The "telephone tooth" would place a small device in a person's back molar that includes a wireless, low-frequency receiver and a gadget that turns audio signals into mechanical vibrations, which would pass from the tooth directly to the inner ear as clear sounds.
The user also would keep a tiny device outside his body to turn the cellphone on and off and to program it.
On Friday, people lined up at the Science Museum to try out a prototype of the "telephone tooth," which is officially known as the audio tooth implant. The crude imitation of the device included a walkie-talkie and a plastic cocktail stick that users placed in their mouths to receive vibrations in their molars.
Reactions ran the spectrum from fascination and consumer interest, to fear of the dentist and horror about surrendering personal privacy.
"The sound was surprisingly clear, but 10 years from now we'll probably find out that the phone implant causes throat cancer," said Kiaron Hunt, 25, a tourist from Sydney, Australia. "But I guess we're heading for a high-tech world where everyone's on the go all the time. Maybe we won't be able to do without such tools."
Jane Biglin, 44, from suburban London, said she loved the quality of the sound, but it seemed odd she couldn't talk back.
And even though the device would allow her to talk to her husband in private over the noise of their kids, Biglin said she wouldn't want anything implanted in her mouth.
"I know twenty-six different points on your body I could hit and release enzymes into your brain to compel you to tell the truth -- Talk!"
Barry Ween, The Adventures of Barry Ween Boy Genius, Monkey Tales #3
The Magic Touch Scientists invent the Cyberhand, a brain-controlled robotoic hand with fingers that can actually feel By Billy Baker
Last October we reported on the first mind-controlled bionic limb, a multimillion-dollar prosthetic arm built by scientists at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago [“A Toast to the Bionic Man”]. Now a team of European scientists led by Paolo Dario, a professor of biomedical robotics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy, has unveiled the first brain-controlled prosthetic hand. The metal-clad prototype, dubbed the Cyberhand, combines unprecedented mechanical dexterity with a sophisticated computer system designed to harness brain signals from the wearer, allowing him to move and feel the hand as though it were his own. Dario and his team expect to begin testing the Cyberhand on patients this year, during which time they aim to perfect its sensory interface. Consisting of a microprocessor, electrodes and a telemetry system implanted in the wearer’s lower arm, the interface will act as a sort of man-machine interpreter, translating and ferrying electrical signals back and forth between the hand and the patient’s central nervous system. To do this, the team has invented electrodes that record electrical data from nerve cells and stimulate the cells to provide the wearer with sensory feedback. Current systems do just half the job, recording electrical signals without sending any data back to the brain.
In addition to its ability to communicate with the body, the Cyberhand features a number of mechanical advances, including five independently moving fingers. A DC motor in each digit gives the robotic hand 16 degrees of freedom, so it can move in a variety of subtle directions (the human hand has 22 degrees of freedom). Each motor pulls a Teflon-sheathed cable that mimics actual tendons and muscle in the fingers, enabling them to curl around a coffee mug, for instance. With pressure sensors embedded along the surface of the fingers, the hand can pick up even delicate objects without crushing them.
Although the primary goal of the Cyberhand is to make patients feel as if they have their limb back—that is, to design a fully functional hand that moves in perfect sync with the wearer—engineers are also paying close attention to aesthetics. “When we hear from patients, they say they’re almost ashamed of using the kind of pincher mechanisms that are on the market,” says Lucia Beccai, the project’s manager. For that reason, the entire mechanism will be encased in a silicone cosmetic glove made to look like a real human hand, down to the fingernails. The hope is that it will “look and feel more natural for the patient, so it will feel less like an external part of the body,” Beccai says.
Obviously, the technology is not quite at the stage where a Luke Skywalker type can get his hand lopped off and simply head down to the droid department for a flawless replacement. Beccai expects that it will be another five to eight years before the Cyberhand even goes on sale, but she’s confident that the Star Wars era is on the horizon. “This is truly a great moment for enhanced prostheses,” she says. “With smaller motors and new sensors, big change is going to happen in a relatively short time.”
"I know twenty-six different points on your body I could hit and release enzymes into your brain to compel you to tell the truth -- Talk!"
Barry Ween, The Adventures of Barry Ween Boy Genius, Monkey Tales #3
