Hopefully a semi-unique approach to user interfaces

If advertisements along Boston's Red Line are any indication, smartdevices are moving towards ever larger screens for users to interact with their media.  One distinct challenge of these larger screens is allowing consumers to still comfortably use their device on a regular basis, ideally with out using two hands all the time. As consumers we are hyper caffeinated and overstimulated it would be a real shame if we had to put our coffee down to answer a phone call.  One solution, as put forth by Apple is to simply restrict the width of their phones to the width of a 90th percentile human female (ok I'm assuming here, I remember reading that their phone width was partially dictated by ease of single thumb use I just don't know the specifics), and as far as I know this is the only real solution to the problem that I know of off hand.  What I would propose, as we are already embedding more and more sensing technology into our smart phones, would be to take advantage of this expanded awareness to allow the phone to detect how it is being held.  so no matter how you held your phone it would know how you wanted to use it, and adjust its default interface accordingly.

Figure 1, Phone Held in Right Hand

For example if I am holding my phone to make a call in my right hand, the number pad would re-position itself so that at no point would I need to adjust my grip to reach the number 1. (As shown in Figure 1.)  Ideally whatever sensing technology I was using would be able to detect the dimensions of my individual fingers, allowing for truly dynamic sizing and positioning of the interface space.  Alternatively (I don't have a drawing, I try to limit my crappy art to 4 per day) if I were to interface with my hand gripping at a higher position, the interface space would move accordingly.

Figure 2 Horizontal Positioning and Full Tablet

Placing the phone in a horizontal position with both hands gripping the back would create split input regions designed to accommodate the thumb size of whatever user is holding the device.  Junior and Senior can both use the same tablet and feel confident that their fingers will find the buttons they are looking for.  A potential benefit I could see if technologies like this were to become ubiquitous would be more consistent user experiences across platforms sizes, while the display screen might change size the sensation of input in all but extreme sizes would feel roughly the same, allowing for people to have much more efficient interface with technology.  The final interface area is putting the device on a table or a docking station, at which point the entire surface becomes a viable input.  I should comment that I would be extremely surprised if people wanted a user interface as cut and dry as described here, the necessary fine tuning and wow factor of an interface like this would come from determining how much resistance is experienced before other parts of the screen become active as the user grips the device.


As far as I know the precise approach I am putting forth is relatively unique (I only did about 30 minutes of skimming patents and research documents, but nothing really popped out)  Microsoft did a research paper on interfaces designed to flexibly interact with either a single thumb or four fingers. Here is one very broad patent that basically says that you can have a touchscreen where parameters change according to other parameters (oh yeah that seems legit(ok I haven't really read it in depth enough to really comment, I just have issues with software based stuff)).  This patent deals with adjusting the displayed interface on user proximity, (90% sure a semi decent patent attorney could show the difference between approaches, and hell I'm not going to try making money off of this idea)
Ahah, after spending too much time looking into it, I found that DoCoMo of Japan is doing some grip interface research in smartphones.  Another dude wanted to just use a straight up different input methodology, regardless of external sensors.  Yet another alternative UI, no adaptive properties right now.

So long story short, I am probably not making a truly unique proposal, but it was fun to get the idea out there, and at least I can honestly say that I only found the individual elements of what I am suggesting, but no one showed up in the hour of research I did.  Please don't get mad if I am wrong.

Follow Up March 20, 2016:  I have been meaning to post this follow up for a while, itty bitty radar chips could allow smart devices of the future to implement this proposed adaptive user interface.

An Alternative to Salting Sidewalks(?)

One of my less testable ideas for sure, but during my dog walk this afternoon I saw again how much discomfort salting streets and sidewalks causes our four legged friends.  The general idea would be some kind of non-toxic biodegradable material, that during the day time becomes some color that will convert as much solar energy into heat as possible, while not being aesthetically unappealing.  At night this material would magically become transparent, to reduce the potential for ice formation.  

Making Homes Smarter, because freezing your ass off is no fun

During snowstorm Nemo I had the distinct pleasure of hanging out in a house that had to hover around 48 degrees to conserve heating oil.  A side effect of the apartment collectively forgetting to check our fuel levels until they were dangerously low.  During a walk home I was inspired by random thoughts to start sketching out a device that could help people avoid this issue happening.  The product I suggest is relatively straight forward as an initial platform, but with some revision could turn into quite a flexible home automation technology.  Connecting a low cost camera system to a micro-controller with a wi-fi or ethernet routing module would allow home users to place a smart device next to their home fuel meters to allow for automatic updates on their energy use.  In the rather crude drawing below you can see the sensor assembly placed near a fuel gauge with a plain background placed behind it (that is to help the camera read as readily as possible).

A really basic set up from a software approach to this technology would be to have a single piece smart package that customers would purchase.  After buying the package a customer would do a one time plug in set up where they connected their home smart sensor to any screened device with a USB port to provide a window for inputting information like, the name of the home WiFi network, network password if necessary, the user's email(s), and a specified frequency of how often they would like to be updated on system readings.  After set-up clients should be able to more or less ignore that their physical device exists and wait for updates on the systems operation.  As the necessary technologies get cheaper, users or service providers could even start to train the micro-controller to identify on its own when it would need to alert users when critical changes were happening to the system ex. fuel levels are getting critically low.

With the right APIs integrated into the system it would be possible to design the platform so that it would automatically order more heating oil (or whatever service it was connected to) from a designated service provider.  If the components became cheap enough it might be reasonable for companies like heating oil providers to distribute these smart systems to customers to allow for smarter predictions of service demand over time.  As the base system is relying on simple visual reads off of a webcam, it would be fairly reasonable to see later adaptations that made it possible to attach sensors like these to natural gas and electrical meters.  (I'm well aware of smart meters already in existence, the intent of this platform is to provide a way to add greater sensing ability to legacy hardware that might be too expensive to replace or not allow for retrofitting as a result of aesthetic/historic concerns)

Another potential application of a technology like this could be for management of liquid wastes like cooking oil.  Smart sensors in the grease collectors would allow collecting services to work automatically, increasing productivity and customer satisfaction.

Technology like this might help keep an eye on elderly family members while minimizing the invasion of privacy.  Concerned relatives could put simple sensors on the home heating, refrigerator, and some critical lights, the mesh could start to identify points of concern  (crap I think this originally came from Microsoft's smart home initiative, oh well)

Feb 1:  Well son of a be sting, it looks some MIT alumni have developed a very different approach to the idea I was proposing.  Their device apparently measures the energy performance of a home's heating system.  

Hybrid Energy Production via Compressed Air

Using compressed air as a means of storing surplus grid energy is one of the many proposed means of increasing our energy grid's overall sustainability.  By reducing the variability of energy produced from renewable sources and allowing output to match demand we would be able to offset a good deal of our current coal based energy production.  One of the many challenges of using compressed air as a means of energy storage is reheating the air back to a viable temperature when you want to produce power. What I would propose is the development of a class of power plant that is intended to be reasonably environmentally friendly, but acknowledges that use of additional technologies would provide the necessary short term risk reductions that current utilities embrace.
None of the technology components I will suggest are untested or high in maintenance costs (as I understand things, not saying much but I thought full disclosure and all that)
Solar thermal plants are an established platform for producing cost effective renewable energy to the grid.
Natural gas has been suggested as a means of augmenting solar thermal plants to allow them to operate at night.
Firms like LightSail Energy (actually they may be the only company exclusively doing this tech) have made tremendous strides towards making the compression phase of compressed air energy storage more energy efficient.

By combining these various technologies into a singular facility you could produce an extremely efficient hybrid facility capable of producing grid levels of power 24/7 in tandem with storing surplus energy from the grid until demand arrives.

In the image above you can see how the system configuration might be roughly laid out.  As the grid produces more energy than customers demand through out the day, large compressors would operate to store air in tanks place throughout the facility (as solar thermal plants already have to disrupt their region of operation you might as well take full advantage of that and keep the tanks close to home)  During day time operations the solar thermal power plant would operate almost exactly as traditional solar thermal facilities excluding one key feature, the cooling system, the waste heat of the plant would first be piped through a heat ex-changer connected with the compressed air generator.  Providing a wonderful operational synergy between the two operations, the compressed air gaining the necessary thermal energy to output as much power as possible, while the solar thermal plants operating fluid receives more robust cooling than ambient air temperatures would allow for (also providing an efficiency boost).
Earlier I alluded to the use of natural gas in this configuration which might seem confusing if this system is so "cool" on paper.  This is a feature that hopefully might not be necessary, but being realistic is rarely a terrible idea.  There are proposals on the books (there may also be facilities in operation) to have solar thermal  power plants that have natural gas burners near the heat collectors to allow for night time operations.  This theoretical power plant could most assuredly take advantage of this design characteristic as well to help ensure utilities found the design as useful as possible.
All in all what I'm putting down is a relatively straight forward design suggestion, as it turns out most of the elements were already suggested by others before I wrote this entry (I just didn't find out until I started putting words to webpage)

Gloves that fit like skin

Biologically capable 3-D printers are at the very early stages of creating a technology platform that should allow us to convert human stem cells into a viable alternatives to more traditional organ transplant technologies.  In 2011 researchers at Cornell made quite a bit of noise in the news when they said they had managed to print a replacement ear for a patient (although said ear was made of silicon, it served as a tremendous first step into helping the human body be rebuilt).  Last August researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine published their work on improvements made in technologies capable of depositing skin cells directly onto damaged flesh, improving the healing time of the patient.  Recently scientists have released a paper highlighting drastic improvements in 3-D bio-printing that should make it easier to print out structures made from embrionic stem cells, providing potentially massive flexibility in the formation of replacement organs.
Medical advancements aside, bio-printers have created another potential avenue of research, the production of so called ethical meat.  By using various technologies researchers are working to create a meat source that only requires that your cut of steak is grown no full animal ever forming.  There are some questions as to the viability of such technologies as it would cost roughly $300,000 to make a single hamburger and steak is out of the question as the texture would be too difficult to achieve.
Fashion has also started to embrace 3-D printers as a way to create new innovations within their own field, with an entire show devoted to designers embracing new their new frontier.
What I envision is the merging of these worlds even further.  Imagine a leather jacket that fits like another layer of skin, with no seems to be seen, as none would exist.  By utilizing various printing technologies designers could realistically digitally develop a product for clients and then print out units on demand.  Even under the most ideal circumstances of innovation it is unlikely that clothing made in this way will be affordable to the masses anytime soon, but for those who need to spend a quarter million dollars on a rather tacky jewel encrusted cell phone, such rarity would impart these pieces of clothing with tremendous value.  The potential for environmental preservation should also not be ignored, as vat grown leather's cost is reduced the impact on species harvested for their fur, skin, feathers, or scales, should hopefully begin to rapidly diminish.  Few are likely to protest clothing that is made from vat grown skin cells as opposed to an endangered species.  Hopefully as technologies like in-vitro meats become more cost effective and lower on their impact than their traditional competitors, we can reduce our species burden on the world's ecosystems.
Follow  Up
So it turns out that the idea of producing bio-printed leathers is not unique (hopefully I will get cosmic brownie points for suggesting you print the leather to the final desired shape)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waro4LJDZvU&feature=youtu.be&t=2m17s

Wandering across asteroids

Asteroids, comets, and meteorites are a new class of natural disaster, one that humans have the technological ability to prevent (whether we have the will to deflect these cosmic bullets is another story entirely (ok positive light).

A still from the nuking an Asteroid video

 Being the inventive species we are the range of potential solutions is truly astounding. Michael Bay's Armageddon had the most popular sound track of any movie about stopping an asteroid, it also had one of the more problematic solutions. that being said we have an excellent video of what that would look like, ok so it won't embed so please follow this link.  

More recently there was a proposal to use paintballs to coat the surface of an asteroid with varying colors of paint to very slightly alter the emissivity of the asteroid and over time change the path of the body just enough to avoid the earth.  In total Wikipedia lists about 14 different major ideas for preventing an asteroid mission.  I would like to humbly add my own idea to that mix.

Terrible drawing of a satellite walking on an asteroid 

The gentle tug of gravity connects every single large body (or collections of small bodies) in our universe, this force has been one of the more popular suggestions for changing an asteroids orbit.  By positioning a satellite on one side of the asteroid you very slowly tug the asteroid a little more to the left (I'm being arbitrary on terms here, so what).  This solution is extremely elegant and minimizes chances of creating surplus debris floating around our solar system.  My personal take on this idea is instead of having the satellite match course with the asteroid, a space agency could instead land a walking robot on the surface of the body, and create the gravitational tug a little closer to the surface.

The belief behind this approach stems from several factors; first off, I just think this idea is wicked awesome, it would be so cool to have a giant spindly legged robot wandering across the surface of a body where the force of gravity is so low (the original inspiration came from watching a TV show on deflecting killer space objects and I thought wouldn't using a pogo stick approach be cool, but as time went on a single point of contact at irratic intervals felt more and more dubious)  After the thoughts on the coolness factor mellowed out more rational design considerations came to the surface, a robot walking across the surface of an asteroid might in theory be able to have a lower overall launch mass as the legs can be electronically powered, while the gravity tug satellite would need a certain amount of fuel to allow it to maintain its course.  Another factor would be proximity to the original center of mass of the asteroid.  The inverse square law elegantly shows us that if you double the distance you are from a celestial body, the force of gravitational attraction is reduced to a fourth of the original value.  By having an automaton walking across the surface of an asteroid you could move your spacecraft much closer, drastically increasing the force of attraction between the two bodies, either reducing the overall launch mass of the machine, or increasing the overall change in ballistic trajectory per unit of time per unit mass.  A secondary consideration is flexibility in mission planning, a well designed asteroid walker could be launched at almost any time, sit on the surface of the asteroid for years if need be, and at a predetermined time stretch its legs after a long hibernation and begin wandering the axis of rotation and quietly protect humanity.  This feature could also allow the walker to avoid space debris during emergency situations, if the asteroid were to encounter a dust cloud that hadn't been seen during the original mission planning phase the robot could be able to hunker down in a quiet crater until the storm had passed.
I will try to follow up with some more math later, I just need to get back to looking for work.

Follow Up
Wired magazine has an article highlighting the concept of attaching a super massive tether to an asteroid to change its orbit.  The author of the article seems to indicate that an impacter being used at the right time would probably be more effective.  It also linked to a youtube video that showed that the gravitational tractor approach appears to require the probe be placed in front of the asteroid, making my idea appear less viable.