5 ms·

Good article. I can't help but wonder why way-finding / path-finding vibrational orienteering vests aren't a thing yet. You could vibratory signal a path in c

Good article. I can't help but wonder why way-finding / path-finding vibrational orienteering vests aren't a thing yet. You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc.

shuntress 5y ago
The market for people who need a non-visual device to help them detect obstacles, threats, or supply caches is too small to justify the expense (both per-unit and of development) of such devices.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Just list military applications of whatever you want developed. They are not concerned with how big of a market it might be. If can give their troops advantages, they are interested.
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    I can't really see this having use in a high-tech military. The main differentiator of contemporary technologized militaries is their incredible logistics and coordination capacities, which have a very hard dependency on knowing your own location. They know this obviously and so those systems are robust and redundant already. When those systems and their backups fail you're into like, "hide and wait for help" or even straight up sere training shit, because the entire thing that makes you a powerful force rather than just a guy with a gun is gone. Knowing which way is north is not gonna solve your problem at that point. Knowing "which way to the supply cache" might but if that piece of tech is still working probably so is your normal radio and gps.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Anything they have to look at to get informed is a huge burden. Anything that burns up batteries driving a display is a huge burden. Anything that destroys night vision is a huge burden. So, anything that provides them the most essential bits of combat information (e.g. that is the direction back to base) without need to look at it, and using only microwatts, is a huge benefit.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Hunters complain bitterly about GPS ruining their night vision, and all those gadgets using up heavy batteries. Soldiers have it even worse, carrying, literally, pounds of batteries, sometimes tens of. Anything that works without needing to produce power-burning, night-vision destroying light they have to look at, and weighing them down, is a huge benefit.
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    Wouldn't they use reflective LCDs ? As low as you want brightness, and tiny power consumption !
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Reflective LCDs are useless in the dark.
      - BlueTemplar 5y ago
        Are they ? I tried to find some information on scotopic visual acuity, but nothing solid... Otherwise, transflective LCDs with red backlight (rods aren't sensitive to red light).
        ncmncm 5y ago
        Fine, but it is strictly better not to need to look. For information more detailed than can be delivered by ambient channels, of course, you need to get it some other way. But audio will often be better than needing to focus on a little display, even if with red backlight.
- robocat 5y ago
  One person might be all the market you need, if that one person is wealthy enough. Aside: I think stating opinions as facts is poor form.
krisoft 5y ago
> You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc. What sensors would this vest use to figure out where you are and where the obstacles and threats around you are?
- ncmncm 5y ago
  It could get regular situation updates from base, and rely on GPS and compass to relate local position and orientation to interesting points. Just knowing at all times, without need to look at anything, the directions to mission objective and back to base would be useful.
  - krisoft 5y ago
    > Just knowing at all times, without need to look at anything, the directions to mission objective and back to base would be useful. You are not going to get direction from GPS sadly. You could have it from differential GPS but I can’t imagine a way how to do mount a long fixed baseline comfortably on a vest.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      You get direction by combining GPS with a compass.
clort 5y ago
I remember reading about an experiment where they gave somebody a belt which would vibrate at the north side and the subjects became very spatially aware would never get lost. Even when they were taken at night, blindfolded and driven around for like half an hour they could point to the way home without really thinking about it. ah seems to be a product now: https://point-iot.eu/success-story/navibelt/ https://point-iot.eu/success-story/navibelt/
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  This is a skill you can teach yourself through mindfulness alone. I've never been driven around blindfolded, but I can enter a building, go through a big maze of hallways, and be able to tell you which direction north is.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    We probably have a magnetic sense that we lose conscious awareness of through not paying attention. There are cultures whose language grammar depends on all directions being relative to cardinal points. Even three-year-olds never get it wrong.
Someone 5y ago
In general: battery life, difficulty of fitting, limited usefulness for the costs. Also, for your task, you’d need the precise location of your subject, or highly reliable obstacle detection (including “there’s nothing, not even a good path” obstacles), probably both. The latter sort-of works for self-driving cars, but their computers are rather big to carry around, and they can declare anything “clearly not a road” as “obstacle”. They don’t have to recognize a small footpath across a mountain ridge, or alongside a river.
raisedbyninjas 5y ago
I read about a hobby project a while back that used vibrating motors to keep the wearer aware of magnetic north. It supposedly made quite a difference. Here's a project that could be the same thing. https://newatlas.com/north-paw-vibrating-ankle-compass-kit/26459/ https://newatlas.com/north-paw-vibrating-ankle-compass-kit/2...
- ncmncm 5y ago
  That was a good idea, but a very stupid execution. All you need is an ear bud that clicks as your head turns past each cardinal point. (The click can vary by which point it is.) You can implement this with 10 grams of microcontroller and a magnetic sensor. Add a couple of grams more for GPS, and you can have it click when your head points to where you parked your jeep or tent. To maintain battery life, you turn on the GPS only once every 5 minutes, and rely on the compass for real-time orientation. (This might not be so useful for soldiers, because they have mostly long since wrecked their hearing. Maybe use barely perceptible electric shocks, for mil application.) After a very short time, the clicks etc. fade from conscious perception, and you just know your directions at all times.
  - skykooler 5y ago
    To have it be useful for those with hearing loss, it could use a little haptic motor instead to provide a virtual click you feel instead of hear.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Electric shock would be more hard-core though. Soldiers who complained about a barely perceptible electric shock would be laughed at.
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    That's not going to save as much power as you think--civilian GPS has to download a message from the satellites that repeats on a 30 second interval before it can give a good answer.
open-paren 5y ago
There was a Youtuber that made a device like this with the lidar from an iPad and a 3x3 grid of dots to detect obstacles. The problem he ran into was sensory resolution vs. ability to perceive that resolution. (Unsurpisingly) your eyes are unparalleled for picking up visual resolution. https://youtu.be/8Au47gnXs0w https://youtu.be/8Au47gnXs0w

shuntress 5y ago

The market for people who need a non-visual device to help them detect obstacles, threats, or supply caches is too small to justify the expense (both per-unit and of development) of such devices.

dylan604 5y ago
Just list military applications of whatever you want developed. They are not concerned with how big of a market it might be. If can give their troops advantages, they are interested.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  I can't really see this having use in a high-tech military. The main differentiator of contemporary technologized militaries is their incredible logistics and coordination capacities, which have a very hard dependency on knowing your own location. They know this obviously and so those systems are robust and redundant already. When those systems and their backups fail you're into like, "hide and wait for help" or even straight up sere training shit, because the entire thing that makes you a powerful force rather than just a guy with a gun is gone. Knowing which way is north is not gonna solve your problem at that point. Knowing "which way to the supply cache" might but if that piece of tech is still working probably so is your normal radio and gps.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Anything they have to look at to get informed is a huge burden. Anything that burns up batteries driving a display is a huge burden. Anything that destroys night vision is a huge burden. So, anything that provides them the most essential bits of combat information (e.g. that is the direction back to base) without need to look at it, and using only microwatts, is a huge benefit.
ncmncm 5y ago
Hunters complain bitterly about GPS ruining their night vision, and all those gadgets using up heavy batteries. Soldiers have it even worse, carrying, literally, pounds of batteries, sometimes tens of. Anything that works without needing to produce power-burning, night-vision destroying light they have to look at, and weighing them down, is a huge benefit.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  Wouldn't they use reflective LCDs ? As low as you want brightness, and tiny power consumption !
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Reflective LCDs are useless in the dark.
    - BlueTemplar 5y ago
      Are they ? I tried to find some information on scotopic visual acuity, but nothing solid... Otherwise, transflective LCDs with red backlight (rods aren't sensitive to red light).
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Fine, but it is strictly better not to need to look. For information more detailed than can be delivered by ambient channels, of course, you need to get it some other way. But audio will often be better than needing to focus on a little display, even if with red backlight.
robocat 5y ago
One person might be all the market you need, if that one person is wealthy enough. Aside: I think stating opinions as facts is poor form.

krisoft 5y ago

> You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc. What sensors would this vest use to figure out where you are and where the obstacles and threats around you are?

ncmncm 5y ago
It could get regular situation updates from base, and rely on GPS and compass to relate local position and orientation to interesting points. Just knowing at all times, without need to look at anything, the directions to mission objective and back to base would be useful.
- krisoft 5y ago
  > Just knowing at all times, without need to look at anything, the directions to mission objective and back to base would be useful. You are not going to get direction from GPS sadly. You could have it from differential GPS but I can’t imagine a way how to do mount a long fixed baseline comfortably on a vest.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    You get direction by combining GPS with a compass.

clort 5y ago

I remember reading about an experiment where they gave somebody a belt which would vibrate at the north side and the subjects became very spatially aware would never get lost. Even when they were taken at night, blindfolded and driven around for like half an hour they could point to the way home without really thinking about it. ah seems to be a product now: https://point-iot.eu/success-story/navibelt/ https://point-iot.eu/success-story/navibelt/

oh_sigh 5y ago
This is a skill you can teach yourself through mindfulness alone. I've never been driven around blindfolded, but I can enter a building, go through a big maze of hallways, and be able to tell you which direction north is.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  We probably have a magnetic sense that we lose conscious awareness of through not paying attention. There are cultures whose language grammar depends on all directions being relative to cardinal points. Even three-year-olds never get it wrong.

Someone 5y ago

In general: battery life, difficulty of fitting, limited usefulness for the costs. Also, for your task, you’d need the precise location of your subject, or highly reliable obstacle detection (including “there’s nothing, not even a good path” obstacles), probably both. The latter sort-of works for self-driving cars, but their computers are rather big to carry around, and they can declare anything “clearly not a road” as “obstacle”. They don’t have to recognize a small footpath across a mountain ridge, or alongside a river.

raisedbyninjas 5y ago

I read about a hobby project a while back that used vibrating motors to keep the wearer aware of magnetic north. It supposedly made quite a difference. Here's a project that could be the same thing. https://newatlas.com/north-paw-vibrating-ankle-compass-kit/26459/ https://newatlas.com/north-paw-vibrating-ankle-compass-kit/2...

ncmncm 5y ago
That was a good idea, but a very stupid execution. All you need is an ear bud that clicks as your head turns past each cardinal point. (The click can vary by which point it is.) You can implement this with 10 grams of microcontroller and a magnetic sensor. Add a couple of grams more for GPS, and you can have it click when your head points to where you parked your jeep or tent. To maintain battery life, you turn on the GPS only once every 5 minutes, and rely on the compass for real-time orientation. (This might not be so useful for soldiers, because they have mostly long since wrecked their hearing. Maybe use barely perceptible electric shocks, for mil application.) After a very short time, the clicks etc. fade from conscious perception, and you just know your directions at all times.
- skykooler 5y ago
  To have it be useful for those with hearing loss, it could use a little haptic motor instead to provide a virtual click you feel instead of hear.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Electric shock would be more hard-core though. Soldiers who complained about a barely perceptible electric shock would be laughed at.
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  That's not going to save as much power as you think--civilian GPS has to download a message from the satellites that repeats on a 30 second interval before it can give a good answer.

open-paren 5y ago

There was a Youtuber that made a device like this with the lidar from an iPad and a 3x3 grid of dots to detect obstacles. The problem he ran into was sensory resolution vs. ability to perceive that resolution. (Unsurpisingly) your eyes are unparalleled for picking up visual resolution. https://youtu.be/8Au47gnXs0w https://youtu.be/8Au47gnXs0w