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Sony Files Patent For Temperature Feedback Move Controller
Zothecula writes "Video game developers are always looking for new ways to give players a more immersive experience. But with several motion-controlled systems widely available and a viable virtual reality headset in the works, what else could be done to make games seem more realistic? Sony may have an unexpected answer with a recent patent that describes a controller that changes temperature between hot and cold to match in-game actions. With the controller giving 'temperature feedback,' the idea is that players would be able to more closely feel what their character feels, from getting hit with a fireball to traveling through a blizzard."
Apparently Sony is moving into adult entertainment now. This thing plus dual shock can make one hell of a toy for one lucky lady.
Very interesting, but since heat is energy, the control will either have to emit heat (to get warm) or at the very least "pump" heat from place to place, neither of which are very cheap energy-wise (relative to the small size and batteries of a wireless controller). So this may not be practical in a wireless, battery-powered controller.
I would think thermoelectrics would be good for this, but the problem is once the whole controller is hot from being held, it would be hard to cool unless the heat could be radiated into the air.
Better known as 318230.
I have not RTFA, but the only way I can envision that would be through the use of peltiers. Those will give both hot and cold with ease. The only downside is they suck up quite a lot of current - the battery life would render this impractical for wireless controllers.
If Sony really wants an immersive, realistic "Sony Experience," it should develop a controller that installs a root kit on the other player's system that allows you to temporarily read his messages, see what music he has and make his controller punch him in the face.
Wait. I think I was picturing the Soviet version. Reverse that. It installs the root kit on your system and you're the one who gets punched in the face.
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Yet another useless stupid option to turn off before playing a game. I always have to hunt around and turn the stupid vibration options off because all it does is distract my aim or whatever. Rumble pack has been nothing but pure gimmick ever since Nintendo tried it. Wherever this technology goes it's almost certainly on the immediate disable list.
Fear is the mind killer.
I worked on a system similar to this for a man with an prosthetic arm. We stuck a temperature sensor in the finger of the prosthetic hand, and used a small thermoelectric plate which contacted his skin where the prosthetic attached to him. The back side of the peltier plate was glued to an aluminum bar acting as a thermal source/sink, and the front side had a small stainless plate acting as the contact point with a second temperature sensor bonded to it for feedback. Using a microcontroller and a bit of simple hardware, we made the peltier plate temperature equal to the temperature detected at the finger. With some limits, of course.
The man went from having a plastic arm to having something that *felt* like an actual part of his body again. He described going home and touching his wife's face, and almost breaking down crying - it felt pretty good to hear that, especially since it only took us a few days to design/build the thing.
Anyway, it ran off three NiCd AA batteries and had a battery life of about 24 hours - he'd plug it in to charge when he went to bed, and it would easily last until the next charge cycle. These days thermoelectric devices are more efficient, batteries are a lot better and microcontrollers have much better power consumption.
There's a few things that make a system like this fairly low power:
- You don't need a big contact area to get the sensation of temperature across to the user - you don't need to heat or cool their whole hand. Half a square centimeter is plenty if you put it at a fairly temperature-sensitive part of the hand, such as where your fingers meet your palm. It'll feel weird at first but the 'immersion' feeling will eventually set in.
- There's only a narrow range of temperature that you have to drive the contact plate to. You don't need to do 0 to 50 degrees C, and I fully expect Sony to restrict the range to +-10C at most for liability reasons, not to mention practical reasons.
- Skin isn't *that* thermally conductive.
So if your contact plate is sized small and only within a few degrees of body temperature, you're probably only moving half a watt at most between the hand from the contact plate.
Secondly, I seriously doubt the thermal "immersion" effect will be running all the time, probably only acting on 'events' the game - walking indoors/outdoors (pulse of hot/cold), picking up a weapon from the ground (cold), getting hit with a fireball (hot), falling into water (cold), etc. Much like vibration motors in controllers don't run all the time.
End result is that running the thermoelectrics won't take that much power, and sinking/sourcing heat from within the controller shouldn't be that hard. Overall, seems pretty practical to me.