Fw: BlindNews: The touchy-feely side of telecoms

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Leon Gilbert" <BlindNews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Blind News Mailing List" <BlindNews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2005 2:19 PM
Subject: BlindNews: The touchy-feely side of telecoms


> New Scientist
> Sunday, February 27, 2005
>
> The touchy-feely side of telecoms
>
> By Celeste Biever
>
> At the end of March 2005 Samsung will release a mobile phone with a
difference. Not only will it be able to send images and streaming video, but
the phone can vibrate in such a way that you can add the sensation of a
playful tickle to your text message, or make the person on the other end of
the phone feel as if their handset has slapped them across the face. Welcome
to the world of haptics - the technology of recreating touch and texture
through artificial stimuli.
>
> The most widespread use of haptics so far is in video gaming, in the
vibrating game pads and force-feedback steering wheels that accompany Sony's
PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox. These devices give you a sense of how
good a virtual golfing shot was from the force feedback on the joystick, or
let you feel how close you are to being run off the road in racing games.
>
> But Samsung's phone is the first mass-market use of haptics. When you send
a text message you can add one of a number of sensations from a menu. When
the person reads the message, "vibrotactile" motors in their phone are
activated. These are basically more complex versions of the motors that
allow many mobile phones to vibrate when ringing. The precise frequency and
amplitude of the vibrations generated by the motors simulates the desired
sensation.
>
> "I have been waiting for this for a few years. It's a challenge to develop
systems that are low-cost and lightweight," says Ed Colgate, a mechanical
engineer who works on haptics at Northwestern University in Chicago, US.
>
> Feel the quality
>
> The haptic technology behind game pads and the Samsung phones has been
developed by Immersion of San Jose, California, US, which is one of the
leading companies in this fast-growing field (see graphic). From these
simple beginnings, analysts think the technology will have many
applications, for example, in haptic gloves and pads designed to give online
shoppers a feel for products.
>
> Imagine being able to feel the quality of a cashmere sweater before you
buy it, experience the roadholding of a car or feel the finish of a piece of
furniture. "Physical involvement creates a real attachment and is lacking in
online interactions," says Colgate.
>
> Just like graphics and sound, touch can be coded as digital bits. They are
sent in packets over the internet or a cellphone network then reassembled or
"rendered" in some form at the other end. So why has it taken so long for
the technology to develop?
>
> "Haptics is fundamentally more difficult over the internet than sound or
vision," says Colgate. This is partly because touch encompasses a wide
variety of physical factors including force, vibration, temperature and
texture, and unlike light or sound, it can be sensed over the whole body.
>
> Phantom sensations
>
> But there are ways to simplify the problem. In 1996 three researchers at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, built a three-jointed robotic
arm called the Phantom that lets you experience the feeling of doing
surgery. On the end of the arm is a stylus that you grip like a pen, and as
you manipulate it, the forces in the arm mimic the sensation of cutting
through tendons or placing a catheter, for example. The Phantom gives
medical students experience of surgery without putting patients at risk.
>
> Another problem is that touch is interactive - you have to press something
to feel it. This two-way quality is difficult to achieve over the internet
because of delays, called latencies, which can mount up and disrupt the
interaction.
>
> Although a delay of more than 200 milliseconds may be acceptable for
holding a phone conversation or watching video, touch needs a fairly
immediate reaction to be realistic, says Kenneth Salisbury of Stanford
University, California, US, one of the inventors of the Phantom.
>
> Holding hands
>
> For haptics to reach their full potential, the technology also has to be
able to convey a wide range of tactile sensations. Sile O'Modhrain at Media
Lab Europe in Dublin, Ireland, says that "pre-packaged" haptics have barely
scratched the surface.
>
> For example, a student at MIT has built a phone that can transmit a
squeeze of varying strength. Accelerometers in the phone measure the
strength and speed of the squeeze and reproduce the effect at the other end
of the line, making it feel a bit like holding hands. Much of the technology
needed to achieve such effects already exists, O'Modhrain says.
>
> O'Modhrain has a personal interest in haptics: she happens to be blind. A
touch-based internet could be a real boon, but efforts so far have not been
impressive. They have concentrated on reproducing the raised outline of
shapes such as graphs and pie charts. But as Curtis Chang at the Iowa-based
US National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science points out: "If you
grew up blind, they don't mean anything to you."
>
>
> http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7049
>
>
>
>
> --
> BlindNews mailing list
>
> Archived at: http://GeoffAndWen.com/blind/
> Address message to list by sending mail to: BlindNews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Access your subscription info at:
http://blindprogramming.com/mailman/listinfo/blindnews_blindprogramming.com



  ------------------------------------------------
- To post messages on SMCC mailing list, simply send email to
smcc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

- You can subscribe to SMCC mailing list by sending email to
smcc-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
with 'subscribe' in the Subject field with your subscriber list.

- You can unsubscribe from SMCC mailing list by sending email to
smcc-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field

This list is managed by Dang Hoai Phuc
Please click this link
http://dhp.p9.org.uk
to visit his own website!

Other related posts: