SixthSense is a
gesture-based wearable computer
A wearable computer, also known as a body-borne computer, is a computing device worn on the body. The definition of 'wearable computer' may be narrow or broad, extending to smartphones or even ordinary wristwatches.
Wearables may be for general ...
system developed at
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...
by Steve Mann in 1994 and 1997 (headworn gestural interface), and 1998 (neckworn version), and further developed by
Pranav Mistry (also at
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...
), in 2009, both of whom developed both hardware and software for both headworn and neckworn versions of it. It comprises a headworn or neck-worn pendant that contains both a data projector and camera. Headworn versions were built at
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...
in 1997 (by
Steve Mann) that combined cameras and illumination systems for interactive photographic art, and also included gesture recognition (e.g. finger-tracking using colored tape on the fingers).
SixthSense is a name for extra information supplied by a wearable computer, such as the device called EyeTap (Mann), Telepointer (Mann), and "WuW" (Wear yoUr World) by
Pranav Mistry.
Origin of the name
Sixth Sense technology (a camera combined with a light source) was developed in 1997 as a headworn device, and in 1998 as a neckworn object, but the Sixth Sense name for this work was not coined and published until 2001, when Mann coined the term "Sixth Sense" to describe such devices.
Mann referred to this wearable computing technology as affording a "Synthetic Synesthesia of the Sixth Sense", believing that wearable computing and digital information could act in addition to the
five traditional senses.
[An Anatomy of the New Bionic Senses ardcover by James Geary, 2002, 214pp] Ten years later,
Pattie Maes
Pattie Maes (born 1961) is a professor in MIT's program in Media Arts and Sciences. She founded and directed the MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group. Previously, she founded and ran the Software Agents group. She served for several years as ...
, also with MIT Media Lab, used the term "Sixth Sense" in this same context, in a
TED talk
TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
.
Similarly, other inventors have used the term sixth-sense technology to describe new capabilities that augment the traditional five human senses. For example, i
U.S. patent no. 9,374,397 timo platt et als, refer to their new communications invention as creating a new social and personal sense, i.e., a "metaphorical sixth sense", enabling users (while retaining their privacy and anonymity) to sense and share the "stories" and other attributes and information of those around them.
References
Further reading
* Elish, M. C. (2011, January). Responsible storytelling: communicating research in video demos. In Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction (pp. 25–28). ACM.
External links
Sixthsense TutorialsPranav Mistry's SixthSense homepageSixthSense Google code siteSixthSense Github repository
{{Mixed reality
Augmented reality
Virtual reality
Graphical user interfaces
Surface computing
MIT Media Lab
Gesture recognition