Gizmo helps the lost
Boffins at the University of
Electro-Communications in Tokyo have come up with a gizmo which will direct
you around a town by tugging your ear.
Their ear-tugging navigator looks like
a bug-shaped hat and was being shown off I the "Emerging Technologies" area
of SIGGRAPH '09, the 36th international conference on computer graphics and
interactive techniques. Dubbed Pull-Navi, has six helmet-mounted motors to
pull the wearer's ears forward, backward, left, right, up and
down.
Psychologically people follow the machine's advice instinctively. Apparently humans work just like horses in that regard. However it does
mean that you can connect the gadget to your phone and get exactly where you
want to go quite quickly. Of course you will look silly and will have red
ears by the time you get there.