Steerable Humans?

By Alan

Remember the key plot to the Disney movie Ratatouille? The adorable, [and hygienic] rat turned an un-culinary young man into a virtual cooking platform, by mysterious means of grabbing his hair, and manipulating food, spices, cooking utensils, and even knives.

While this got a good chuckle out of the audiences everywhere, and most people thought, "how absurd!" there is actually some good scientific studies behind the idea of subtle adjustments to pressure on the head that will strangely compel people to follow those pressures to go follow directions. Mothers certainly know that grabbing the ear of a child will often get instant cooperation on following, even if considerable whining might accompany it.

No one is absolutely sure about how this works, but already someone at SIGGRAPH has started to exploit the idea using existing technology.

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