In this slothful world that we now live, the only exercise some of us get is searching for the remote. Now a couple of boffins at Wollongon University in Australia have even eliminated that.

Dr Prashan Premaratne and Quang Nguyen have invented a gadget that  responds to hand signals - so if the remote is in the kitchen you don’t even have to drag your sorry ass off the couch to go get it. You just make the appropriate gesture with your hand and a sensor attached to the top of your TV turns on/off, changes channels/volume etc.

Nice to know the clever people of this world are helping us to evolve - and make our passive couch potato existence even easier. God forbid that someone should invent something to get you moving - like a couch that ejects you after 15 minutes or the like.

PS - maybe I have to add a postscript to this and acknowledge that some bright spark has come up with an invention to get people moving. Welcome to “Wii” - if you can find one. And there was/is the “Dance Dance” revolution - fantastic inventions using piezoelectric “gyro-sensors” and such unlikely sounding features as a “rumble feature pack”. All better than just exercising your thumbs on the remote, but still doesn’t get the kids out the house.

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