Thursday, November 19, 2009

Mind Reading Showers

First off for all the Stars Wars fans there's this.

Ok, now for the overly thought out terrible idea.

I want a hat that I wear when I take a shower that reads my EEG. Over time I would train it to learn when I'm feeling too hot and too cold. Once it has caught on to what pattern indicates my feeling about temperature it could take over control of the shower temperature. If you think having an EEG learn when I feel hot vs cold is the most impractical part of this idea, I think you'd be surprised - this is when a link to an article about one of those devices that let people move a mouse cursor with their mind would be helpful, but it's too late at night to bother. Might be able to make the problem easier by also looking at something like rates of nerves firing on the skin, especially for an early indicator if the temperature is too high or low. Of course the feedback system would have to be carefully designed so that it wouldn't make changes too rapidly or overshoot the goal by too much, but that's not terribly difficult (basically just need to make it an over-damped system or critically damped if a little overshoot is acceptable).

This might sound super lazy and it is, but I am annoyed when I have to keep adjusting the knob up and down to maintain what feels like a comfortable temperature. There should also be a shutoff button that both electronically and mechanically shuts off water to the shower in case the system went haywire and cranked up the temperature. If the EEG was connected to the shower by wires that would get in the way, but all of this could be done wirelessly, especially if the hat did some of the data processing. Hm, I guess the hat would get in the way of washing my hair, but do you really have to wash hair since after a while you cut it off and grow new hair anyway? Well, I guess clean hair is nice so instead of a hat for EEG the shower could be built inside a fMRI. I'd have to keep perfectly still, but if I'm spending a million dollars on a shower I could probably have it wash me without it needing me to move.

Somewhat more seriously I'm surprised that I've never seen a digitally controlled shower. I wouldn't expect it most places, but maybe fancy hotels - well maybe fancier hotels than I go to.

1 comment:

Jess said...

My grandpa in Japan built himself a "modern" little house detached from their old-fashioned house. It had a Japanese bath and a separate shower area that was digitally controlled. You put "40" (celsius) and the water was perfect. That was like 20 years ago and that shower is still there. I've always wondered why we don't have that everywhere.