Echolocation implant
You all may have heard by now that all humans use echolocation to some degree, and some of them, out of need, have managed to master the technique to remarkable heights. Fact is, some boost to our body equipment is needed to reach the level of precision of dolphins, bats and other animals. Research by academics has consistently shown that training is quite easier than expected, with sighted subjects starting to notice obstacles within hours, and to differentiate objects in about a week.
The solution would probably be either a cochlear implant or one straight to the V1, plus a sonar conveniently standing on a headset for signaling. Daniel Kish and co. have been working on such a device for several years (no news made public on the results so far, though), Warwick did some incursions into it, and now Cannon and Saver are tinkering with their magnet implants to develop their own "bottlenose" haptic echolocation-like system. There are commercial sonars for blind in the market, many handheld, most also haptic, and all of them failing to deliver significant results.
We are simply talking about automatically emitting a signature sound in the right set of frequencies and intervals by a sonar, and getting feedback from the surrounding at a much, much higher resolution than natural echolocators can manage to do (see Underwood, Bushway, Kish and others), straight to the inner ear or ideally implanted in the "visual cortex". The brain would do the rest, specially in those than lack visual input and therefore can use the processing power left unused to navigate using the new data flow. If people manage to get results by clicking their tongues, imagine what could they do with proper gadgets.
This would potentially mean being able to see in the dark, "structures such as bones, and even certain objects inside a bag", and more, as Professor Juan Antonio Martinez of Madrid's Alcala de Henares University reported in '09 , "this would be a new way of perceiving the world". As far as I see this is an area with huge potential, both for the blind and sighted people. Anyone willing to work together to make it happen please get in touch.
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cochlear implant's are terrible enough the way they currently work. and even that can't be implanted unless you have a highly qualified team of surgeons.
the sonar idea itself is pretty easy to pull off, altho it does eat a lot of energy and will hardly work fully subdermal. but if you rely on some regular electrodes implanted under your skin somewhere, it should be do-able. or at least promising enough to try it.
btw. as far as i am informed. "sound" quality of a cochlear implant is pretty much horrible compared to natural hearing.
such an implant will allow you to notice a car crash next to you. but even understanding word's will take tons of training. at least. that's my current knowledge bout this subject. you may be a lot better of with an electrode array in your earlobes or so.
http://learnecholocation.blogspot.nl/ appears to be one of those 'test for sufficient interest' sites, that wants to confirm that there is a market, before writing and publishing the material.
Here is a little applet that simulates seeing with sound. http://www.seeingwithsound.com/javoice.htm .
I came upon this when I was looking into using sound as an interface to bringing data into the brain faster than reading it. Totally external to the body.
edited: I should learn what haptics means before I use the word the wrong way.
Btw. the cochlear implants still have 16 leads and higher definition than 16 tones is achieved by using electronics to simulate higher definition - instead of giving current from one electrode the implant uses two electrodes with varying current, the closer the tone to tone of electrode 1 the higher current in electrode 1 and lower in 2, while when the sound closes to electrode 2 tone the current on electrode 1 is reduced and on 2 increased and so on... Thanks to this there are 'virtual' electrodes between physical ones defined by how well the electronics are able to simulate it by adjusting currents.
I personally would imagine an echolocation implant as a device implanted on hand or forearm (not sure what size the device does have) and implanting electrodes (wires as thin as possible to reduce trauma to the hand, possibly injected, or inserted by other method not as traumatic as cutting and separating skin from connective tissue underneath) into palm of a hand - for example 16 electrodes forming a 4x4 grid or 36 for 6x6 grid (or any other number we could fit inside), and then using a microchip to translate input from echolocation device to signals to electrodes, possibly adding the 'simulated' electrodes in ways similar to those used in cochlear implants.
This way using those electrodes to produce a tingling sensation (or touch, or other - possibly not pain ;P ) stronger in places where something hard - more reflective to ultrasound is detected, weaker with things 'gray' on ultrasound and with no electrode activation when something is translucent to ultrasound, it would create something similar to a sensation of touching the surface being scanned with ultrasound - a sort of tactile map...
I was thinking of using ultrasounds as in a ultrasonograph, to scan patient's body (I'll be a doctor soon) while simply touching him with hand, adding USG depth to regular palpation, but I don't see why something like this couldn't be used for echolocation in a similar way, just different wave frequency...
I guess a sort of glove device could be made as prototype proof of concept before actually trying to implement something like this as it's quite an extensive implantation...
Alternatively, to not touch palm of hand (which is difficult to cut into without specialized equipment and experienced hand surgeon, without risking loss of feeling in hand and other problems) the electrodes could possibly be implanted on inside of wrist or forearm (skin there doesn't have such feeling definition as on palm of hand, but should be sensitive enough - ultrasound isn't something that produces HD results anyway, just rough images)
I still guess something like this is quite a big surgery, but on forearm it could be doable without a specialized hand surgeon ;P
Why limit this idea to echolocating though? I've been contemplating this for a couple of days, and it seems like you would need an external system of some sort to gather data right? So you would need to implant something to talk to that external input or rely on some sort of haptic feedback from the external device itself...
So if we've got a bulky external device, why not super power it? The best, and most available, device for mapping a 3d space is the Kinect. You could potentially shoulder mount/wrist mount one and utilize it to send a 3d map to your internal system.
http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/3gear-dual-kinect-motion-controller-system-offers-precise-gesture-control-video-04-10-2012/
There's already proven methods to observe the surrounding data utilizing a kinect, so the next question is how to map this into something your body can understand...Is there any potential to install decently sized magnets into your chest area? If so you could put maybe 4 magents on both your front and back (one near each shoulder, one in a higher location in the middle and another below in the middle), then utilize a vest with magnet coils to stimulate the implants. Utilizing multiple magnets would not only allow you to determine multiple objects, but also allow you to determine specific sizes, for example a person or a door frame.
It would also be interesting to know if you could do a push and a pull on the magnet and be able to tell the difference. Specifically for the blind, having the ability to just map where something is and knowing how fast it's moving or if it is coming or going.
ps. Just ordered my magnets, have been wanting to install them for months now and will hopefully have them in the next month or so.
At any rate I would think it falls into the same category as the glove. Some wire run along a vest (for electromagnets) would be much thinner than vibration/pressure systems. This potentially allowing the wearer to wear normal clothes.
Even with big magnets you don't think you could feel them vibrating? Not even enough to tell if they are pulling in a direction? I would think in the chest you could mount some pretty big magnets. Electrodes on the skin may work too, though that seems more like an on/off sensation instead of a 3d sensation. Vibration would be good for just range finding, though you would need a lot of motors to get a 3d feel and you probably couldn't get a high fidelity because you're not to sensitive to the different levels and you couldn't put them too close together. Pressure plates could work to give greater differentiation, as well as telling push/pull. Maybe a combination of vibration and pressure to give speed and distance?
Ian, ignoring the problem of location and size: I think it would be easy enough if you were comfortable with something like a raspberry pi (though it seems like at this point that device doesn't have enough power to do it). Getting the data out is the easy part.
I'm not a physicist, so I'm basing some of this off of 3 college physics courses and a crapton of math courses.. One thought is to utilize standing waves to create the shape of the surrounding environment as the magnet field.
Or maybe this demonstrates what I'm thinking of better (skip to 1:00)
The youtube is ferro fluid. If you have mutliple magnets you can make different forms. Would there be a potential way to map a height map to a magnetic field and then project that?