Okay, so you probably won’t be slinging webs today, but this specialized suit heightens your body’s sensitivity, allowing you to react or avoid even with your eyes closed.
The suit, called “SpiderSense” was developed by Victor Mateevitsi, a PhD graduate student from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) of the University of Illinois at Chicago. The body suit is fitted with sets of robotic arms located at specific body parts, as well as sets of modules that contain ultrasonic transmitters and detectors.
How does it work? The transmitters send out high frequency waves into the environment. When these waves hit an object, such as an approaching person or attacker, these waves are reflected back to the suit, and received by the ultrasonic modules. As a result, the modules communicate with the robotic arms on the suit, putting pressure on the body parts that are nearest to the attacker. This allows the wearer of SpiderSense a means of reacting or avoiding, even without seeing the attacker.
Mateevitsi started testing SpiderSense on his teammates by allowing the guinea pig to wear the suit while blindfolded. He will be holding a set of cardboard shurikens, which he will throw in the direction where he “perceives” the approaching attacker is coming from. Amazingly, the SpiderSense helped the test subject be 95% accurate with his shurikens. How cool is that?
Besides gathering news and reviews for his work, Mateevitsi proudly announced that this research paper involving SpiderSense will be presented in March at the 4th Augmented Human International Conference at Stuttgart, Germany.
Hopefully, the creator envisions SpiderSense to be applied to persons with disabilities, or those with visual impairments, allowing them to lead normal lives. Let’s just wait and see where the success of this project takes Mateevitsi and his team.
Check out these other Spider-Man inspired features: The Amazing Spider-Man game trailer, and this cool Spider-Man tattoo.
Via Discovery News
