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Getting
Wired
Imagine
entering a health centre where your blood pressure, heartbeat, blood
sugar level, cholesterol and other preliminary data are fed to the
computer system by items you are wearing on your body. The human
body, like a copper wire, can transmit electric current. Now
software giants like IBM and Microsoft are trying to exploit the
conductivity of the human body by trying to turn it into a fast and
reliable information relay system.
The technology in question is
known as Personal Area Network (PAN) or Body Area Network (BAN).
Though IBM pioneered work in this area about a decade ago, Microsoft
has recently been awarded a US Patent No. 6,754,472 titled Method
and Apparatus for Transmitting Power and Data using the Human Body.
The patent includes a wireless PAN of computing devices distributed
around the body in jewelry items including watches, bracelets,
earrings, necklaces and rings. Microsoft also intends to turn your
palm into a keypad. The human body offers the physical resistance to
electricity. That’s why we don’t get electrocuted when we play with
low-volt circuits. A virtual keypad on a palm or a patch of skin can
be created using the resistance offered by the body. Futuristically,
we can use our palm to send SMS messages.
The magicians Penn and
Teller started it all when they wanted to puzzle the audiences by
playing a set of invisible “air drums” without any kind of physical
contact, not even a gentle touch. They approached Thomas Zimmerman
and Neil Gershenfeld at the MIT’s Media Lab for help. Zimmerman and
Gershenfeld used Penn’s body as an antenna. The audience was amazed
as they listened to the sound coming from invisible drums. Soon
after, Zimmerman and Gershenfeld had an opportunity to develop a
network of devices, like Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) that a
person could carry.
The naive way of making a network of devices
is to wire the devices. But carrying so many wires around would be
very awkward. The alternative way of creating a network is to make
the devices communicate using infrared or radio frequencies. Both
methods have serious limitations. Infrared communications, used in
remote controls, requires the receiver should be in direct line of
sight with the receiver. Radio frequencies, used in broadcasting,
could interfere with other devices. Using the body as the medium of
communications seems to be a reasonable and logical method. In this
scheme, an earring could talk to a bracelet seamlessly. Zimmerman
envisaged that the electrical signal flowing through the body could
be turned into digital bits. For example, the flow of electrical
signal can represent 1 and turning signal off can represent 0. The
variation of electrical currents could thus enable the body to carry
digital information.
In 1995, Zimmerman joined the IBM’s Almaden
Research Center. In November 1996, he demonstrated a prototype of
PAN technology at the prestigious Comdex computer industry trade
show in Las Vegas. The prototype enabled two people to exchange
their electronic business cards via a simple handshake. In the demo,
each participant wore a small transmitter and a receiver.
The
PAN technology is promising in many areas, but its main contribution
is projected in the health sector. It promises to monitor the health
status of patients suffering from chronic diseases, such as asthma,
diabetes and cancer. Under BAN’s care, a set of compact devices on
the human body talk to each other and also to a main station within
the body. The main station consolidates the data received from all
devices and sends it to a physician’s system. The patient
information then can be forwarded to a central data warehouse via a
telephone line or Internet.
Raj Kaushik
(A former project
coordinator with the National Council of Science Museums, India, the
author now works as senior server developer in
Toronto.)
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