HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mauah@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Mr I D Bygrave)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: SCI: Direct Neural-Electronic Interfacing
Date: 11 Dec 92 10:29:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Dec12.041627.16760
Organization: Computing Services, University of Warwick, UK
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu


In article <1992Dec11.053831.1167@u.washington.edu> AKOSSOWSKY@TURBO.kean.edu (A
ndy Kossowsky) writes:
>
>You give technology too much credit. I can certainly see
>how nanotech could facilitate the BUILDING of a Direct Neural Interface,
>but only after someone DESIGNS one.  Researchers know so little
>about the actually workings of the brain's neural network, so even
>if nanotech sprang into existance fully developed tomorrow, we
>wouldn't know what the heck to tell the little 'nanites' to do in there!
>
>ApK
Certainly if nanotech were to magically 'appear' overnight we couldn't make
full use of it. But it isn't going to do that, and in the time it takes to 
develope these capabilities, we can start thinking about some good ways to
use them once they do arrive.
For a better discusion of these ideas, take a look at sci.nanotech.

-Ian D. Bygrave Undergradate Computer Science at University of Warwick, UK
        mauah@csv.warwick.ac.uk
        ibygrave@dcs.warwick.ac.uk
"We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny
 of the selfish replicators"-Richard Dawkins. The Selfish Gene.
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: cdshaw@cs.ualberta.ca (Chris Shaw)
Subject: Re: INFO: FASA / Battletech info sought
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: University of Alberta
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 20:07:03 GMT


In article <1992Dec13 jpc@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au (John Costella) writes:
>> > I am seeking contact info for the crowd that creates the Battletech
>> They do not have an internet, or other, electronic address; however, they do
>> have other things.
>> 
>> Phone; USA (312) 243-6515
>> Virtual World Entertainment
>> 1100 W. Cermak
>> Suite B404
>> Chicago, IL  60608

>Does anyone know where the techos that
>actually design / build the things are in the new structure (if
>they are still on the payroll :)?

>John P. Costella              School of Physics, The University of Melbourne
>jpc@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au         Tel: +61 3 543-7795, Fax: +61 3 347-4783

The computer hardware aspect of Battletech was created by a company called
Incredible Technologies. Tim Skelly was a member of the design team for 
this project, although he now works at Microsoft Labs. Tim was also on
the Cue Ball interface design team. Tim attends CHI every year, also.

The address

    Incredible Technologies
    709 W. Algonquin Road
    Arlington Heights
    Illinois,
    60005
    USA

--
Chris Shaw               University of Alberta
cdshaw@cs.UAlberta.ca    CatchPhrase: Bogus as HELL !
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: broehl@sunee.uwaterloo.ca (Bernie Roehl)
Subject: Re: TECH: REND386 and the 486DX
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 12:14:48 GMT


>First of all, REND386 only runs ALMOST twice
>as fast on my 486/50DX as it does on my 486/25SX.

Right, that makes sense.  At twice the clock speed, it should be almost twice
the performance.

There will also be differences in speed attributable to different video
cards; in some (many) cases, the bottleneck is in writing to video ram.

>It's obviously not
>using the 50DX to it's fullest potential (on the benchmark program 'Checkit'
>the 25SX scores 226K drystones (math speed), the 50DX scores 8200K drystones

Those are probably done using the floating-point capabilities of the 486.
REND386 uses integer math only (which will be faster than floating point,
even on a 486).  It therefore doesn't require or use a floating point math
unit.

>How can I get it to use the coprocessor's
>instruction set?  Can I recompile it differently to get it to do so?

You could rewrite the code to use floating point, but it would be a lot of
work and the result would actually run slower.

>And second...does anybody know ANYTHING about the VAX system (I know
>NOTHING about Vax...ABSOLUTELY NOTHING) ...I have an opportunity to
>get one that's about 6 years old...can I use it for anything? (i.e.
>networked with my 486's to take care of some aspect of VR?)

Hmm.  I suspect that VAXen are no longer worth bothering with, given the
speed of current systems.  Six years is a really long time in this industry.

Also bear in mind the cost of additional memory for those systems (assuming
it's still available!), the cost of peripherals, software, etc etc...

I wouldn't bother with it.

-- 
        Bernie Roehl, University of Waterloo Electrical Engineering Dept
        Mail: broehl@sunee.UWaterloo.ca
        BangPath: uunet!watmath!sunee!broehl
        Voice:  (519) 885-1211 x 2607 [work]
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: bobp@hal.com (Bob Pendleton)
Subject: Re: TECH: Has anyone extended X?
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: HaL Computer Systems, Inc.
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 15:50:47 GMT


>From article <1992Dec12.041710.16989@u.washington.edu>, by robert@triton.jpl.na
sa.gov:
> 
> I was wondering if anyone has done any input extentions to X with
> regards to a head tracker??
> 
> 
> -robert

X has a device input extension, called "xinput" that is designed to
make it easy to add new input devices to an X server. In the past I've
used the xinput extension to add several different input devices to X
servers. Assuming you have the source code for the X server you want
to extend it should be pretty straight forward to add a head tracker
as an input device to X. You'd probably model it after a dial box.

                                Bob P.

-- 
Bob Pendleton             | As an engineer I hate to hear:
bobp@hal.com              |   1) You've earned an "I told you so."
Speaking only for myself. |   2) Our customers don't do that.
                   <<< Odin, after the well of Mimir. >>>
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: jpc@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au (John Costella)
Subject: Re: TECH: Highly accurate jaw motion tracker
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: University of Washington
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 20:28:51 GMT


> In <1992Dec6.073625.17022@u.washington.edu> Ken Sullivan writes:
> >...a jaw motion tracking/recording system.  It was IR based and non-
> >restrictive. It was accurate to .1 mm and a fraction of a degree.  I have
> >modified the system to be a head tracker within a room. It can determined
> >X,Y within the room and determine pitch,roll & yaw of the head.
> 
> Tell us more!!!
>   DPL

Hey there's a nice way to do voice recognition: don't bother with
the voice, just measure the moving mouth and tongue! :) With one
of those little eency-weency-cams in front of your mouth, you could
probably apply much of that hand-gesture-by-video research, with
a few modifications. May then mean that you don't need an American 
accent to get the damn thing to work <grin>.

John

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
John P. Costella              School of Physics, The University of Melbourne
jpc@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au         Tel: +61 3 543-7795, Fax: +61 3 347-4783
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: rnm@well.sf.ca.us (Robert Marsanyi)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: APPS: Gesture recognition using simple statistics (DataGlove app.)
Date: 13 Dec 92 00:13:28 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Dec13.030320.13954
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu



> ..discussion of static gesture recognition and extensions for including
> dynamics..

Note also Dean Rubine's work at Carnegie-Mellon on dynamic single-path
gesture recognition.  He sent me a copy of his thesis on request, and it
seems, although written for 2-D (mouse) input, to be perfectly extensible to
3-D input.  The recognizer is fast, too (based on timings in the document),
and the training process is again training-by-example, with a small example
set providing good recognition.

I'm set to hack on this stuff early next year, when my schedule clears out.

But if somebody beats me to it ...

--rbt
(Robert Marsanyi, rnm@well.sf.ca)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: cdshaw@cs.ualberta.ca (Chris Shaw)
Subject: Re: INFO: WSJ: `Virtual Reality' Patents Gained By French Firm
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: University of Alberta
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 06:54:13 GMT


In article <1992Dec10 bukys@cs.rochester.edu (Liudvikas Bukys) writes:
>In summary:  Earlier this year, VPL pledged its patent portfolio as
>collateral for $1 million in loans.  The French firm Thomson CSF SA,
>minority owner and largest creditor, obtained the rights to the patents
>when VPL failed to repay the loans.

Interesting... Actually, I think the only worthwhile patent is the 
"representation of a hand as a VR hand" patent, which is pretty bogus 
considering that the technique was invented at NASA, and is obvious to boot.

>My own feeling as a VPL customer (we own a DataGlove) is that VPL was
>in the business of reaming out their customers to the maximum possible
>extent.  They charged a lot for a mediocre product, were hard to get a
>product out of, and were uninterested in cooperating with their
>customers.  

Yeah. No kidding. Who the hell are these "top flight engineers" that the
Wall Street Journal refers to? Nobody I ever had dealings with!

>(No source code for a relatively trivial DataGlove interface toolkit library

We used VPL's DataGlove code for about a month before we junked it to 
write our own. Especially with the glove, it seemed that you had to assume
that they had done something stupid before you could get anywhere. My
favorite example of this is that in order to get the DataGlove's gesture
recognizer to work, you had to download some 6502 code into the DataGlove's
RAM. Needless to say, we do gesture recognition in our client code.
Also, half of the DataGlove commands are in fact NOPs because the box has
changed but the documentation hasn't.

>buy a glove with abduction sensors, the Unix toolkit doesn't support
>it, and no, VPL isn't in a hurry to fix this -- tough luck.  

You can get support for the abduction sensors from the MR Toolkit. 

>I don't know if that's why they had financial problems, but
>it can't have helped.

This is probably the number two reason. Number one being that they couldn't
deliver anything that they promised for the last year or so.

--
Chris Shaw               University of Alberta
cdshaw@cs.UAlberta.ca    CatchPhrase: Bogus as HELL !
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: jscherer%db@uunet.UU.NET (John Scherer)
Subject: YASR: Where to get sega LCD glasses?
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: Novell, Inc.
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 19:27:25 GMT


ok.. I'm sure this is a dead horse, but...

Can anyone tell me where I might obtain the sega glasses in the San Jose
area..

Sorry if this is an FAQ, but I am new to this group.

Best Regards,

John Scherer
jscherer@novell.com
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: sgrigsby@falcon.aamrl.wpafb.af.mil
Subject: SCI: Direct Neural Interfacing?!
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: USAF AL/CFH, WPAFB, Dayton, OH
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 19:52:05 GMT


Re: Direct Neural Interfacing

 It seems to me that there already exists some transducers that provide superb
direct neural interfacing. They are called the senses. Why would you want to
bypass a system that has evolved with the brain to provide it with the exact
stimulus it needs to get an impression of the world (real or otherwise)?

 I doubt the sophistication will ever exist where we can recreate by neural
stimulation a "world" any better than the one we can input through our senses.
In vision, there is such a complex interaction between eye movements,
accommodation, convergence, stereopsis, pattern recognition, vestibular
interactions, etc., all taking place in different parts of the brain and all
contributing to the percept.

 I believe that instead of looking for ways to directly stimulate the cortex
(and subcortex) through mazes of wires and electrodes, it would be much more 
beneficial to try and understand the needs of the senses and develop 
nonintrusive interfaces that provide the optimal stimulus. Right now the best
we can do is bulky helmets and gloves so that's what we use. 

I can understand that direct neural interfacing can have some benefit in the
opposite direction (human -> computer) but again the required bandwidth is very
restrictive. Perhaps it would be more cost effective to develop better speech
recognition interfaces and use these to communicate with the computer as well
as full body sensors.

I understand that VR is basically designed to create a disembodied brain that
can be transported to new worlds and interact with them, but perhaps for the
short term (say the next 200 years) it would be beneficial to put the emphasis
into how the human interacts with the real world, with its own senses and its
own body, using VR (in the form of sensory interfaces) as a tool and use this
information to understand how to correctly wire up a disembodied brain.

Just some thoughts...

******************************************************************************
 Scott Grigsby
 

-- 

"The opinions and views expressed here are strictly my own and do not 
necessarily reflect the official position of either the U.S. Air Force 
or its contractors."
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: battlec@cs.rpi.edu (Clark Battle)
Subject: TECH: Projection screen with stereo glasses?
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: University of Washington
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 17:32:06 GMT


Has anyone tried to use a large (>4ft) projection monitor with the sega
glasses or some other kind of eye flashing specs?  Is there a hi res projection
system avaliable for use as a monitor?  If the screen is big enough this
might be an alternative to true stereo specs.
From: joro@panix.com (Joe Rosen)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: TECH: parts of Mac interface for PG
Date: 12 Dec 92 20:55:54 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Dec13.030302.13841
Organization: Panix, NYC
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu


In <1992Dec12.042028.17286@u.washington.edu> bradw@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Brad W
yble) writes:


>OOps, sorry, the actuall part is a MAX232 Unipolar RS-232 Line Driver/Receiver

>Does anyone know where to get one?


fairly common part...

    you could try any one of the major electronic component mail order
distributers such as:

                                    Mouser

                                      or

                                   Digi-Key

telephone 800-344-4539 (Digi-Key) or 800-346-6873 (Mouser)...

     every local Radio Shack store can special order common ICs like the
one you are looking for...

ask the store manager to use his lil' "geek" special order hotline (there
actually is a special order IC hotline in every store -- although the odd
individuals that work in Radio Shack [lord hep us all] usually deny this
[i am not paranoid (-: -- but become paranoid everytime i venture into a
radio shack store).
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: Karin August <71033.702@CompuServe.COM>
Subject: MISC: VRASP Chat
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: University of Washington
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 05:37:37 GMT


On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
               two Power Gloves and a high rez H M D.

VRASP Chat on December 29, 1992  at  7 PM.
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: gdavis@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Grant R. Davis)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: YAPGR: PowerGlove to PC:Cable connector.?Where
Date: 18 Dec 92 03:40:44 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu



In article <1992Dec13.012346.6937@gw.wmich.edu> x89olarte1@gw.wmich.edu writes:
>
>Does anybone know where to get the cord that connects the powerglove to
>the PC??

You have to cut up the end of the cable and attach the wires to the parallel
port. I'm trying to do it from the directions in PCVR magazine.
        On a related note, exactly how do you connect the power to the glove?
The article says to use 5 volts, but:  1) how do you get exactly 5 volts?
Anything that has variable power output is probably beyond my price range. I 
found a battery that gives 5.4 volts; is that close enough? 2)How do you 
complete the circuit? The article says to connect one wire to +5 volts, but 
what do you connect to the negative terminal?
        I realize that the answers are probably IOTMCO, but I know very little
about electronics. Let me put it this way; when I bought a multimeter today,
I asked the salesperson what the proper way to ground something was. Please
help before I electrocute myself!

Grant Davis
gdavis@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
From: diego@minerva.st.dsi.unimi.it (Diego Montefusco)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: APPS: Gesture recognition using simple statistics (DataGlove app.)
Date: 12 Dec 92 23:56:39 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Dec13.030439.14411
Organization: University of Washington
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu


There has recently been a doctoral dissertation here at my University
about a dinamic gesture recognition, using backprop. neural nets.
It was showed recognizing 15 dinamic gestures from Italian Sign Language
and making the words be pronunced by a voice synth.
It was able to recognize gestures from various people, not just the one
who trained the system.

Diego


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Diego Montefusco                        B E W A R E ! !
  Via Pirano, 4                        PLEASE REPLY ME TO:
  20127 Milano                    montefus@ghost.dsi.unimi.it
    ITALIA                           (not to the account
phone:  +2  27001467                 I'm e-mailing from!)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: tibbetts@hsi.com (Todd Tibbetts)
Subject: INFO?: Mind Machines
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: 3M Health Information Systems, Wallingford, CT
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 19:05:00 GMT


I am searching for a Mind Machine FAQ

or Mind Machine Mailing list so I can

ask them for a faq...

please send info to me:
tt
tibbetts@hsi.com
From: daver@sunspot.ssl.berkeley.edu (David Ray)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: SCI: Direct Neural-Electronic Interfacing
Date: 12 Dec 92 20:44:47 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Dec13.030243.13676
Organization: Space Sciences laboratory, UC Berkeley
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu


I read somewhere recently that a Stanford professor has been researching
the use of EEG signals to control a 2-d cursor (mouse). It uses a 
conventional EEG-style sensor array (skin electrodes -- no implants)
and he claims to get over 60% accuracy. That is, "think" of where you
you want the cursor to go, and it goes there. No moving parts.

This story sounds quite wild, and I'm going to try to dig up the
source and post it here. (I think I read it. Hmmm.....maybe I dreamed it..)

Dave
From: jnewman@hamp.hampshire.edu
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: SCI: Direct Neural-Electronic Interfacing
Date: 11 Dec 92 19:25:43 GMT
Organization: Hampshire College
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu



 
 (Marcus Brodeur) writes:
>> bold new frontiers to be conquered, certainly, but many (such as
>> direct-neural-interfacing) are certainly NOT going to be conquered in
>> the next century or so.  This is not pessimism on my part (indeed, I
>> am an optimist), but rather a realistic evaluation of progress in that
>> field particularly, also gleaned from discussions with several
>> individuals in the field of neurobiology and neuroscience.
> 
>> Marcus Stefan Brodeur.
> 
> You are overlooking that there are two directions to every computer
> interface.  I will conceed that I've not seen much about direct
> computer->human neuron interfacing, but the other direction is
> extremely plausible.
> 
> The fundamental research into neuron->computer interfacing is already
> 10-20 years old.  The bibliogrphy posted here recently by The Garth
> shows that clearly.
> 
> For about $1000 any schmoe can now go into EEG
> ("brainwave") research.  If you're content with electromyography
> (minute muscle signals), you can build most of what you need from
> stock Radio Shack parts for $20, and easily buy the rest for another
> $200.

  In fact, just last year, a Japanese scientist actually managed to synthesize
neurons and get them to lin up in an electronically useful; manner.  He cites
uses being primarily medical/cybernetic.  Still think it won't happen in a
cnentury?  Hah.  We're talking about the next 5-10 years!

                                The opinions expressed are, of course, my own.
                                Why would I care about yours?

                                -Grendel 2.0
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: copley-devon@CS.YALE.EDU (Devon Copley)
Subject: Re: TECH: Neural Interfacing
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept., New Haven, CT 06520-2158
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 01:18:03 GMT


In article <1992Dec14.014522.6624@u.washington.edu> dstampe@psych.toronto.edu (D
ave Stampe) writes:
>
>Potentially, you could train yourself by biofeedback to associate certain
>commands with whatever gave an EEG signal detectable by the computer.
>But I don't think that's what we're looking for.  
>

Couldn't biofeedback be the crucial part of developing a really powerful input
device?  I'm going to make a couple of assumptions; if they're true (and I 
really have no proof that they are, though if anyone has some, please offer 
it) perhaps "thinking at your computer" isn't impossible.

1: We "learn" to use much of our nervous system through painstakingly 
repeating and practicing actions, strengthening the neural connections 
and pathways associated with them.  And I'm not just talking about learning
how to play the piano, either: simple things like moving your index finger
reliably are a result of long years of refining that output, by basically
firing a few motor neurons and watching what happens.

2: A reciever can be implanted in the brain, sensing the output of a large
number of neurons.

Admittedly, now, a non-destructive (2) is pretty far from reality, and
the only concrete examples I can come up with of (1) are in the motor
realm (although that in itself might not be a problem).

My point is, though, that to some degree it MAY NOT MATTER which neurons
the computer senses, because if an appropriate feedback mechanism is
provided, the subject will "figure it out" for himself, and with 
practice could conceivably develop the same precise control over the
computer as I have over my right hand.

Am I way off base here?  Are there many neurons in the cortex whose output
we have no control over no matter how much feedback we get?  

[Flame deflector on:]
I'm afraid my knowledge of low-level cortical structures is very tenuous. 
Please enlighten me.

Devon


-- 
_______________________________________________________________________________
Devon M. Copley                                                 Yale University
copley-devon@cs.yale.edu       Theatre Studies, Computer Science and Psychology
COPDEVM@YALEVM.BITNET                  "No matter where you go, there you are."
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds