+ CrossPosted in: REG12
 + CrossPosted in: ELECTRONICS
Hi All,

A story from this month's NEWSLOG at http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/ ....

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Smart sanitation 

Today's trend of embedding interactive computers into everyday objects such
as refrigerators or cars has finally reached its apotheosis: an interactive
urinal. Developed by two students at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass., this novel human-computer
interface allows the (male) end-user to play a simple computer game by
manipulating the direction of his urine stream, allowing skills he
traditionally developed writing his name in the snow to be maintained year
round.

Although many urinals in public locations such as airports or cinemas
currently use infrared sensors to detect the departure of a user and
trigger a flush, Dan Maynes-Aminzade and Hayes Solos Raffle's innovation,
dubbed You're In Control, allows interaction to actually take place during
the process of elimination via a grid of 16 piezoelectric sensors on the
back wall of the urinal. A microcontroller passes a digital signal
indicating the currently targeted area to a PC. This runs a whack-a-mole
style computer game displayed on a LCD located above the urinal, in which
players strive to hit hamsters as they leap from hole to hole.

The inventors believe that their technology could improve sanitary
conditions in rest rooms by encouraging patrons to keep their output within
the bounds of the urinal. Additionally, users could use interactive urinals
to browse through news or financial information during what has
traditionally been unavoidable downtime. Although designed for male
urinals, they have also created a wearable game controller which allows
women to partake of this porcelain phenomenon. 

For more details, including a demonstration movie, see the You're In
Control web site at:

        http://web.media.mit.edu/~hayes/mas863/urinecontrol_video.html. 

 


...August

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