Jacket Lets You Feel the Movies

sp3cialk79 writes "Researchers from Philips Electronics plan to describe a jacket they have lined with vibration motors to study the effects of touch on a movie viewer's emotional response to what the characters are experiencing. 'People don't realize how sensitive we are to touch, although it is the first sense that fetuses develop in the womb,' says Paul Lemmens, a Philips senior scientist who will be presenting research done using the jacket at the IEEE-sponsored 2009 World Haptics Conference in Salt Lake City. The jacket contains 64 independently controlled actuators distributed across the arms and torso. The actuators are arrayed in 16 groups of four and linked along a serial bus; each group shares a microprocessor. The actuators draw so little current that the jacket could operate for an hour on its two AA batteries even if the system was continuously driving 20 of the motors simultaneously."

Comments

Games?

[Quothz]

A similar jacket may make an interesting game feedback device.

The thump of a bullet hitting your back in a shooter would be nifty directional feedback. A tap on the shoulder in the dark of a horror game could be startling. The grip on your arm of a frightened refugee you're escorting through a combat zone, an opponent trying to tickle you in a fighting game as a distraction. And of course the same feedback scenarios mentioned in TFA, just in games rather than movies.

Of course, the cost would probably relegate such a thing to a niche market, but it'd be fun component t'play around with in a game's design.