As crazy as it sounds, it’s true. Researchers from the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute, University of New South Wales and University College London have came up with a way to have a person who was walking straight to be steered remotely to the left or right.
In their demonstration, they successfully steered blindfolded people around a botanical garden in Sydney to their objective. When blindfolded, we rely on our ears to maintain our balance and steer in a given direction. Hence, by disrupting the ears’ sensors, the researchers could steer the subject into any direction they please.
The remote-control technique, called ‘galvanic vestibular stimulation’ (GVS), uses electrodes placed on the skin behind the ear. These stimulate our inner ear’s balance (or vestibular) system, including the semicircular canals. These fluid-filled tubes sense our head moving and respond with electrical impulses to the brain, explains Stefan Glasauer, a neurologist from Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany. Artificial electric signals created by GVS give us illusions about our head’s movement.
This could be nasty, if you could somehow manage to sneak one of these up on someone. Because with the right combination of signal and the head’s vertical position, you could make the person simply fall over.
August 16th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
Governments can already get people to fall over using sound weapons. Even NYPD has them ready for use.