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Current State of Haptic Research
prostoalex writes "An article on InformIT.com looks at the current state of haptic technologies: "In the consumer realm, two companies dominate the field in the creation of tactile I/O devices: Immersion Corporation and SensAble Technologies. Right now, each seems interested in consolidating a position in the marketplace.""
haptic (hptk) adj. Of or relating to the sense of touch; tactile.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
"haptic touch" is the name of the system that lets us feel stuff through objects we hold, to "feel the road through the stick or cane, or even through the wheels of a car we are driving."
I'm more interested in what this means for advancements in the Sinulator. Now that's what I want when I say, "Reach out and touch someone."
Mechanical fondleability someday.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Is Immersion the company that sued Sony and Microsoft over certain portions and uses of their force feedback functionalities?
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
I'm still waiting for them to invent the 'Orgasmatron.' I'll know haptic research is ready for prime time when someone rolls those out.
Does this mean that cyber sex will have a new motto? "Reach out and touch someone"
"Okay, gentlemen. We've been hired to plan a media blitz for a new company." ... how about an MTV-style commercial with kids dancing to 'Can't Touch This'?"
"What do they do?"
"Well, they research and market haptic peripherals."
"Huh?"
"Basically the stuff that reads your fingerprints. They want something fresh, exciting - something to pull the youth market."
"Okay
[SILENCE]
"Maybe what they really need is a catchy slogan."
"How about 'InGen Haptic Peripherals: OUR devices can recognize a severed finger. Can THEIRS?'".
"This is going to be a long day."
An article on InformIT.com looks at the current state of haptic technologies: "In the consumer realm, two companies dominate the field in the creation of tactile I/O devices: Immersion Corporation and SensAble Technologies. Right now, each seems interested in consolidating a position in the marketplace.
Nothing about Teledildonics?
is this really the future ?
Moto has implemented what they call haptics in their E398 phone for that extra youth-culture oomph. Hold it while it rings/plays and you'll feel that the oomph is quite literal.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
I'm sorry but (fta:)"Because of our cortical plasticity, tools become an extension of not just the human hand but the human brain as well."
is just odd.
surely "because of our inquisitive & expansive nature..." is more apt.
my plastic cortex has nothing to do with my love of big hammers.
Imagine what a Windows Lock-up would *feel* like...
shudder
/me is glad I use Linux.
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
From TFA: "No wonder his book suggests that we could become so used to these electronic shadows that if we were to lose them suddenly, it would be like having a stroke."
Having a stroke means that you lose functionality; you can't communicate or you lose mobility or you can't do things that you used to do. That sounds exactly like what happens when the power goes out. Take away my computer and I go from a fully functioning member of society to an unemployed bum in a millisecond.
As for the actual content of the article, the technology already exists for applications where it is economical. We've had various kinds of remote manipulation with tactile feedback since the fifties at least. And what about video games with tactile feedback. I think this is one of those cases where the technology won't advance very fast until someone finds the 'killer' application.
The device is a little hard to see in the picture: A person lies prone on a table, front or back down. Then a computer guided "thingee" hanging from a ceiling wire slides back and forth various parts of your skin. I think it can change the amount of pressure. The version at the show appeared to be entirely computer-run. People using it reported either being soothed or tickled.
I presume this could be converted into a teledildonic device by adding human control to the machine. Someone could say something erotic and touch various places on the body.
NEVER!!!
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Actually, there's some very interesting stuff going on, which you wouldn't guess from this rather breathless article. Bill Baxter has created a paint application that you can steer using Sensable's Phantom -- which works like a brush, feels like a brush that's being dragged through paint, and the application mimics paint in a natural way. Really exiting stuff.
Did anyone else get one of these? I actually thought it wasn't bad - it's an optical mouse that used Immersion's force-feedback tech:o ller/ifeel/ l t.asp
:)
http://www.sharkygames.com/hardware/reviews/contr
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ifeelmm/defau
You'd think that f-f in a mouse would throw off the cursor but that wasn't really the case; it had five or six modes from gentle to pretty strong, and was supported by a few games (as well as pretty pointless desktop & MS Office integration).
I got it when Black & White came out 'cause I was intrigued by B&W's game control interface (a single "hand" cursor that changed depending on the environment, and even used gestures to cast spells). Esp. liked the way they customised a few missions for this mouse -- one in particular was great: you found an old hippy/head-type guy standing by a cauldron scratching his head. He was looking for some mushrooms but wasn't sure which one would give him the best trip, so you had to go picking for him & when the cursor hovered over each one the force-feedback would buzz depending on how strong the 'shroom was
Shame they never took off, really, I'd have thought -- esp. given the prevalence of the mouse as a PC game controller -- that there may have been a half-decent market for them, but, hey, I guess not? Suppose it's one of those things that most people are pretty indifferent to, and without the support of major developers it wasn't going to go too far. Ah well!
Can we all agree that "Force Feedback" is a way better name?
I'm pretty sure "Haptic Joysticks" are never going to sound cool.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I used to run a web page devoted to FF and haptics called Force One, back in the day. I've been out to visit with both SensAble and Immersion; they both make very advanced and very different products.
The article mentioned goes into better detail, but in short, Immersion is in the retail and medical space, while SensAble is in the industrial and design spaces.
It's interesting to see what's happened in the consumer space in the past few years; there was a strong push in the very beginning from companies like Logitech and Microsoft (amongst others) to put FF on the map in gaming. As it's turned out, there's no longer a big focus on it; graphics have remained the dominant force (sorry, bad pun!) in gaming. Even sound is falling off the map; FF is far down the list of developer's priorities.
This has always bothered me; while graphics have had a huge focus, and therefore have progressed at a breakneck pace, haptics and other sensory channels have been largely ignored. At one point there was a researcher working with technology that would stimulate your vestibular nerves externally with an electric field. This nerve controls your sense of balance and motion; he'd put together an API that would interface with 3D graphics. So you'd wear this device that had metal contacts that go behind your ears, and you'd "feel" the motion in a first-person game. (He claimed no one ever got motion sick in testing. I call BS.)
I hope they continue moving forward with some of this stuff.
I expect we can also look forward to seeing many great new haptic applications being created as a result of SensAble contest that the article mentions. Being able to feel and interact with simulated objects in a very intuitive way will undoubtedly become an increasingly import part of how we use computers.
I would personally appreciate hearing from anyone out there who has an interesting haptic application in the works (or wants to hear about mine). scottgilroy2000 - a - yahoo dot com
Is there anything open out there? Does someone have to reverse-engineer the protocol to get it to work?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I remember this - IIRC, it was an actual company with a developed product who was doing a combo beta/dev program, where you could buy the API and a device for around $200.00 or so to develop on it. Also, it was based around the same stimulus principles behind medical devices used to stimulate the vestibular system for vertigo research (so I call BS with you). The main idea was that the device could be used in conjunction with a fully immersive HMD setup, so that there would be one more sensory input to the body (simulating motion, etc) in addition to the visual, to help reduce simulator sickness issues...
I have always wondered how well it worked, and why it never went anywhere (probably because no one bought HMDs - thus no need for their product, either - at least in the consumer sector)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I worked last summer at the lab where one of SensAble's SIGGRAPH demos of a musical haptics program was developed. An executive at the company is actually my father's patient now.
Watching the evolution of the haptics program was really neat; it was very intuitive and pretty in the last stage, but I still did not see how one could compose music with it easily (the program featured 3D surfaces which after being manipulated could produce music if you stroked them with the onscreen cursor).
Haptics is really neat; hopefully, more software will use superior controllers in the future. If you've never seen haptics in action, I suggest you try it out!
FUCK YOU!