There’s been a lot of talk about the newly developed Red Tacton system of data transfer in this week’s technology press. Developed by Japanese communication company NTT (the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation), the technology makes use of weak electric fields on the surface of the body to transfer information.
Red Tacton works by means of transceivers equipped with optical sensors capable of detecting fluctuations in these electric fields. In this way data can be transferred simply by touching your finger to a screen or even by one person touching another. While Blue Tooth and Wi-fi have made ‘personal area networks’ a reality, Red Tacton promises the ability to transfer data at speeds up to 10 Mbps across the surface of the skin.
Data transfer would not just be confined to the surface of the body, it will also be able to travel through clothing. According to Guardian Online a Red Tacton-enabled device would, for example, enable music from an MP3 player in your pocket to pass through your clothing and over your body to the headphones in your ears. Unlike other wireless transmission methods, the transmission speed in these human area networks shoudn’t fade in congested environments, instead an increase in the number of connected users would directly increase the available number of individual communication channels.
Research is underway to enable data carried on your person, in a phone say, or a memory stick, to be transmitted to all nearby computers. While fascinating this is still very much at the laboratory stage of development; whether NTT will deliver on its claims remains to be seen.