9,374,397, timo platt et als, refer to their new communications invention as creating a new social and personal sense, i.e., a 'metaphorical sixth sense', enabling users (while retaining their privacy and anonymity) to sense and share the 'stories' and other attributes and information of those around them. Similarly, other inventors have used the term sixth-sense technology to describe new capabilities that augment the traditional five human senses. Ten years later, Pattie Maes, also with MIT Media Lab, used the term 'Sixth Sense' in this same context, in a TED talk. Mann referred to this wearable computing technology as affording a 'Synthetic Synesthesia of the Sixth Sense', believing that wearable computing and digital information could act in addition to the five traditional senses. Sixth Sense technology (a camera combined with a light source) was developed in 1997 as a headworn device, and in 1998 as a neckworn object, but the Sixth Sense name for this work was not coined and published until 2001, when Mann coined the term 'Sixth Sense' to describe such devices. SixthSense is a name for extra information supplied by a wearable computer, such as the device called EyeTap (Mann), Telepointer (Mann), and 'WuW' (Wear yoUr World) by Pranav Mistry. Front-view shows cameras attached to head-mounted display with wireless communications antennae on helmet.

Finger-pointing gesture to outline and select a physical object.

1994 prototype of headworn SixthSense gesture-based wearable computing apparatus invented, designed, built, and worn by Steve Mann, MIT Media Lab.

Video camera apps for computer