[THIN] OT: Wed. Humour - What if the computer is able to hit you back ?
- From: jrb@xxxxx
- To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 13:32:56 +0100
Sometimes you might have the urge to hit your computer hard in frustration
over that stupid thing.. but what if it were able to give you a punch back
?
LONDON (Reuters) -- Scientists in Britain and the United States shook hands
on Tuesday.
No big deal, one might think, but the men in question were 3,000 miles
apart, connected only by the Internet.
In a technological first, two scientists -- one in London and one in Boston
-- picked up a computer-generated cube between them and moved it, each
responding to the force the other exerted on it.
The devices allowing them to do it are called phantoms, which re-create the
sense of touch by sending small impulses at very high frequencies via the
Internet, using newly developed fibre optic cables and high bandwidths.
"The experiment went very well," said Joel Jordan, part of a team of
scientists at University College London (UCL) which has teamed up with
colleague at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to conduct the
experiment.
"You can actually feel the object being pushed against your hand," he told
Reuters. "We can feel each others' forces."
They plan to conduct a second experiment across an even greater distance --
London to California -- later on Tuesday.
UCL said the secret behind the technology is the speed at which the
successive impulses are sent.
"In much the same way that the brain re-interprets still images into moving
pictures, the frequencies received by the phantom are similarly integrated
to produce the sense of a continuous sensation," a UCL statement said.
Not only can scientists feel the force being exerted by colleagues across
the Atlantic Ocean, they can also feel the texture of the object they are
feeling.
"You can feel how rough something is, or how springy the side of the cube
is," Jordan said.
The implications of the experiment could be vast, said UCL, which described
the event as the world's "first transatlantic handshake over the Internet."
For example, trainee surgeons could use it to practice operations via the
Internet.
Recreational uses seen
It would also have recreational uses, allowing people to touch and feel
each other over the Internet.
"There are certainly strange aspects to this," Jordan said. "You can hit
each other hard enough to leave little bruises, and there are bigger
versions of the equipment we're using which could really cause some
damage."
However, don't expect to find touchy-feely computer software in the shops
before Christmas. "I don't think it'll be available to the public for years
-- at least five years," Jordan said.
Jan Rune Bj=F8rkeng
Citrix Administrator
see you at IForum - entering the plane in Oslo in 2 days :-)
Mvh.
Bent Br=E5then Jensen
Leder IT-Utvikling
Norsk Gjenvinning AS
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