Japanese Build a Virtual Hugging Vest

If your only human contact is through a little computer window in a poorly lit room, your life just got a little sadder thanks to Dzmitry Tsetserukou, an assistant professor at Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan. He has designed a collection of motors, sensors, and speakers, stitched into what looks like the straps of a backpack, called the iFeel_IM. The device can simulate a heart beat, the tickling sensation of a butterflies in your stomach, generate warmth and hug even the most repugnant shut-in. From the article: "The quickened thump of an angry heart beat, a spine-tingling chill of fear, or that warm-all-over sensation sparked by true love -- all can be felt even as your eyes stay glued to a computer screen." This device is not to be confused with the hugging vest created by engineers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for people with anxiety disorders and the autistic.

Comments

Re:Nothing New Here

[radtea]

Temple Grandin, an animal welfare advocate and autistic

In fairness to the current researchers, igoring previous work from someone who is known primarily as a marketing genius who can sell absurd ideas to the incredibly credulous is probably not a big oversight.

I mean really, claiming that you can think like a cow because you're autistic? Yet somehow she has managed to sell that idiotic idea, to the extent of turning her personal brand into a highly lucrative business. Apparently no one has bothered to ask any cows if she thinks like them, which would be the only reasonable way to ascertain the degree of truth in her silly claim.

But I guess you don't get paid the big bucks for designing better slaughterhouses if you merely design better slaughterhouses. You've gotta sell them with a ridiculous marketing package that makes every thinking person quite rightfully dismiss the rest of your work as (most likely) equally hyped nonsense.

And yes, I know there have been some "peer reviewed" studies of her hug box, but I also know what "peer reviewed" actually means in practice...