How often does you work suffer, just coz you don’t have enough Gigs left in you pen-drive to hold and transfer data? This situation crops up with me all the time.
Transmitting files and folders from one workstation to another is a bit of an ordeal. Researcher Pranav Mistry of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has cut the knot. He eased out this pain by making it as easy as picking up things from one place and keeping them to another just like we do with physical objects.
Pranav Mistry who attracted global attention for his invention-Sixth Sense and even received Popular Science 2009 Invention Award has struck back again with ‘Sparsh’. He has designed a system (Sparsh) in such a manner that if a user desires to copy a data item from one device to another, all he has to do is touch the screen to copy it (from the source) conceptually saving it in the user’s body, and then touching the other device (the destination) to which they want to paste the copied content.
For instance, you wish to call a long lost friend and you look for that person’s phone number on your laptop. Generally you will see and type the numbers from your laptop to your Smartphone, but if both devices are operating Sparsh, just lay a thumb on the phone number on your laptop’s screen, and then touch your smartphone’s keypad. The system would automatically know what you have transmitted is a phone number and it will then dial it for you. How cool is that?
How it works? The first touch copies the phone number to a temporary file in either a Dropbox or an FTP account and the second touch recuperates the data. This require both devices to be running the software and for a user to be signed into their Dropbox or FTP account. It works for any type of data, be it a photo, an address or a link to a YouTube clip.
Presently Sparsh toils on an application such as smartphones, tablets and other computers, although Mistry states that, “the ideal home for Sparsh is to be built into an OS, so that it can provide the copy-paste feature across all applications”. He says it’s currently possible to incorporate this into Google’s Android mobile operating system and that his team has also implemented a browser-based version.
Among some of his prior works, Pranav has invented Mousless which is an invisible computer mouse;thirdEye – Multiple viewers can see different things on a single screen; QUICKiES intelligent sticky notes that can be searched, located and can send reminders and messages; inktuitive – An intuitive physical design workspace; a pen that can draw in 3D; invent – design of a programming language for children; RoadRunner 2.01 – a 3D car racing game; TaPuMa a public map that can act as Google of physical world and a lot more.
Pranav also won Young Innovator Award TR35 by Technology Review and recently also named on 2010 Creativity 50 list — the list of the most influential and inspiring inventive personalities of 2010.Pranav holds a Master in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and Master of Design from IIT Bombay (now known as Mumbai) besides his Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering from Gujarat University. Pranav’s research interests include Ubiquitous computing, Gestural and Tangible Interaction, AI, Augmented reality, Machine vision, Collective intelligence and Robotics.
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