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The Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) has announced it is developing a technology that uses the surface of the human body to transmit data.
NTT's Human Area Networking technology, which it has branded 'Red Tacton', turns the surface of the human body into a data transmission path at speeds up to 10 Mbps between any two points on the body.
Using an electro-optic sensor, NTT has already developed a small PCMCIA card-sized prototype Red Tacton transceiver. The technology enables the first practical Human Area Network between body-centred electronic devices and PCs or other network devices embedded in the environment via a new generation of user interface based on natural human actions such as touching, holding, sitting, walking, or stepping on a particular spot. Red Tacton aims to be used for intuitive operation of computer-based systems in daily life, temporary one-to-one private networks based on personal handshaking, device personalisation, security, and a range of other applications based on new behaviour patterns enabled by the technology.
NTT says it wants to move Red Tacton out of the laboratory and into commercial production as quickly as possible by organizing joint field trials with partners outside the company.
'Human society is entering an era of ubiquitous computing, when networks are seamlessly interconnected and information is always accessible at our fingertips,' read a company statement on the technology. 'In the past, Bluetooth, infrared communications (IrDA), radio frequency ID systems (RFID), and other technologies have been proposed to solve the "last metre" connectivity problem. However, they each have various fundamental technical limitations that constrain their usage, such as the precipitous fall-off in transmission speed in multi-user environments producing network congestion.'
Red Tacton takes a different technical approach. Instead of relying on electromagnetic waves or light waves to carry data, the technology uses weak electric fields on the surface of the body as a transmission medium. The weak electric fields pass through the body to a receiver where the weak electric fields affect the optical properties of an electro-optic crystal. The extent to which the optical properties are changed is detected by laser light, which is then converted to an electrical signal by a detector circuit.
A communications path can be created with a simple touch, automatically initiating the flow of data between a body-centric electronic device and a computer that is embedded in the environment. For example, two people equipped with Red Tacton devices could exchange data just by shaking hands. A range of natural human actions - grasping, sitting down, walking, or standing in a particular place -- can be used to trigger the technology to start a networked process.
Communication is not just confined to the surface of the body, but can travel through the user's clothing to a Red Tacton device in a pocket or through shoes to communicate with one embedded in the floor. Unlike wireless technologies, the transmission speed does not deteriorate even in the presence of large crowds of people that are all communicating at the same time, whether in meeting rooms, auditoriums or stores. Because the body surface is the transmission path, increasing the number of connected users directly increases the available number of individual communication channels.
Red Tacton can use a range of different materials as a transmission medium, as long as the material is conductive and dielectric, which includes water and other liquids, various metals, certain plastics, glass, etc., allowing on to construct seamless communication environment using ordinary structures such as tables and walls. For example, a user could have instant access to the internet merely by placing a laptop onto a conductive tabletop.
Preuzeto sa: http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=6222
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