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How To Hug a Chicken Via the Internet

Posted by timothy on from the anything-between-consenting-adult-beings dept.

the_newsbeagle writes "Adrian Cheok, a professor of electrical engineering in Japan, wants to invent a "multisensory Internet" that will transmit not just information, but also experiences. To usher in this new age, he started by building a haptic system that enabled him to send a hug to a chicken via the Internet. Next came the 'huggy pajama' project, which allowed distant parents to send their kid a goodnight squeeze. Lately he's begun working on sending a taste over the internet with his 'digital lollypop' project."

19 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Chicken Hugging by JediPhreaK · · Score: 5, Funny

    Really? Hug a Chicken? Come on it's called Choking your chicken, the Internet is a weird place.

  2. Relevant webcomic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A Softer World

  3. Suspicious by Grey+Ninja · · Score: 4, Funny

    So he made a device where you can hug a cock over the internet... now he wants to allow you to taste a cock? Count me out.

    1. Re:Suspicious by Ukab+the+Great · · Score: 4, Funny

      I hear that cock tastes like chicken.

  4. I have 2 backyard chickens by kawabago · · Score: 4, Informative

    i can just imagine the commotion a mechanical monster lumbering into the run to give them a hug. I wouldn't have eggs for days!

  5. Tremendous implications for telemedicine by Andy+Prough · · Score: 5, Interesting

    True remote physical examinations, with the patient and physician both feeling and responding to the tactile interaction. This could be huge - especially in terms of extreme remote medicine, such as handling astronaut-patients on lengthy missions to Mars or the asteroid belt.

    1. Re:Tremendous implications for telemedicine by travbrad · · Score: 3, Informative

      I could see it working on earth, but surely the latency would make it impossible for a physician on earth to tactility interact with a patient on Mars. At best Mars is about 3 light minutes away from earth, and it can be as far as 20+ light minutes away. 100-200ms is enough to throw off online gamers, so I imagine 600,000ms would be a bit too much for a doctor to work with.

  6. The Hard Part by nthitz · · Score: 2

    To me it seems simulating the sense, either touch, taste, or anything else that is the hard part. Sending the data over the net seems pretty straightforward a capable connection.

  7. Japan is weird, did you know that? by Nimey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's an important step forward, but only in Japan would hugging a chicken be an intermediate step.

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
    1. Re:Japan is weird, did you know that? by KramberryKoncerto · · Score: 5, Informative
      It's actually because of the researcher's Australian upbringing. Quoted from here:

      Growing up in Adelaide, Australia, Cheok had often played with the chickens kept by his grandfather, so he decided to focus on poultry (rule one). He built haptic jackets for the chickens himself (rule two), embedding them with vibrating elements. Tinkering taught him just how difficult it is to produce a gentle, humanlike touch. “The system develops as you build it,” Cheok says. “I see research as iterative—you’re learning from what you’re making.”

  8. What's with the cutesy stuff? by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sending hugs over the internet has little practical purposes.

    On the other hand you could solve a lot of the worlds problems if we could punch people in the face over the internet.

    1. Re:What's with the cutesy stuff? by kerohazel · · Score: 2

      Forget punching, we need to go straight to stabbing.

      --
      Skype is too convoluted... Now I'm reverse-engineering the Kyoto Protocol.
  9. H.E.A.V.E.N. by GrpA · · Score: 4, Funny

    Haptically Enhanced Advanced Virtual Environment Network

    H.E.A.V.E.N.

    Nice to see some of this technology starting to progress.

    GrpA.

    --
    Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
    1. Re:H.E.A.V.E.N. by MITguy21 · · Score: 2

      Haptically Enhanced Advanced Virtual Environment Network

      H.E.A.V.E.N.

      aka teledildonics -- a name I remember from the 1980's at MIT Media Lab.

  10. On the internet.. by Megahard · · Score: 4, Funny

    nobody knows you're a chicken.

    --
    I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
  11. Re:Digital Lollipop by wierd_w · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm just waiting for such a technology as that lollipop to actually take off, so I can read about hackers replacing the digital data for the flavor information with that harvested from a turd.

    That's some prankstering hacking I would roffle reading.

  12. Temple Grandin version by macraig · · Score: 2

    I want to see Temple Grandin's version of these remote hug machines.

  13. This is wrong on so many levels by jamrock · · Score: 2

    "Hug a chicken"? "Huggy pajamas"? "Digital lollipop"?

    I've read some disturbing things on Slashdot, but this turns it up to eleven.

  14. Plagiarised? by felixrising · · Score: 2

    A friend, Dr Florian "Floyd" Mueller of RMIT University here in Melbourne, Australia also published a paper on a project called "Hug over a distance" back in early 2005... The projects look surprisingly similar... Floyd heads up the Exertion Games Lab which does a lot of similar "over a distance" Internet enabled interactions.