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.""

Comments

definition for those of you like me.

[PrinceAshitaka]

haptic (hptk) adj. Of or relating to the sense of touch; tactile.

Another definition

[th1ckasabr1ck]

"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."

Let's try again...

[bjpirt]

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.

Re:Immersion

[kid_wonder]

Yup. And looks like they won.

News here

A good use

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Interesting Haptic Applications

[uhead]

Many interesting haptic applications I have come across were not mentioned in the article. SensAble's Phantom devices are being used for simulations like painting, sticking needles in people, and feeling up a cow's rear. Some games have also been developed for or integrated with the Phantom, such as Haptic Battle Pong (previously discussed on Slashdot), Haptic BlockTower, Haptic Dueling Game, and Haptic Quake (my own creation).

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

Re:"Tickle Salon" at SIGGRAPH 2004

[groomed]

What makes the Tickle Salon special is that the tickling brush acts as a sensor as well: it can learn your body contours and use those to apply various strokes in whatever manner you find pleasurable. In other words, the software driving the Tickle Salon actually knows what it's tickling.

Notably, the Tickle Salon was conceived as an art project, and builds on a long line of other work by the artistic duo notnot. Most of it touches on themes of growth and emergence. It's really exciting to see the Tickle Salon draw so much attention from outside the art world.

I presume this could be converted into a teledildonic device by adding human control to the machine.

That would basically obliterate the concept. The whole point of the Tickle Salon is to get the human out of the loop -- or, if you prefer, to put some organic sense into machinery.

I remember this...

[cr0sh]

At one point there was a researcher working with technology that would stimulate your vestibular nerves externally with an electric field.

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)...