Shinoda Lab uses ultrasound so you can feel holograms.

Called the Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display, the specially calibrated ultrasound emitter gives you the impression of physical pressure at the location of a holographic object. Because you aren’t actually touching the hologram, there’s no decrease in the quality of the image. Unlike a traditional speaker, the ultrasound can be focused at a particular location, so you only feel pressure at a certain point. This precision allows AUTD to let you feel individual drops of virtual rain, a bouncing ball, or even a tiny animal running across your palm.

I think it is hilarious and awesome that a key component of  the Shinoda Lab setup is a remote control from the Nintendo Wii. Two wiimotes serve as IR sensors that track the movement of your hand in the hologram space. In order to see your hand, you have to have a tiny marker place on your finger that is very reflective to IR light. As far as hand-tracking goes, it’s a remarkably simple setup. There are some obvious limitations you can see from the video. The size of the hand isn’t well preserved in the virtual space (probably because only one part of the hand is tracked in IR). Still, I’m sure Nintendo is overjoyed with the inventiveness of the Shinoda Lab. Especially since Shinoda just exhibited AUTD at the SIGGRAPH conference in New Orleans.

The guys at Tokyo University are really knocking it out of the park these days. First they made super fast robot hands play baseball, now they could let us play catch with a virtual team. I applaud their innovation and am excited by how many different ways it can be applied. I mean, the AUTD seems custom fit to be integrated into Augmented Reality technology, haptics, and human-computer interfaces. How versatile can you get?

Interacting with visual object is going to be a big development in the fields of computing, gaming, and art. Just looking at the AUTD from the video you can see how they could be easily adapted into a multi-directional 3D setup. When that happens, the AUTD will go from a novelty to a tool that brings about full immersion virtual reality. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing more demonstrations of Tokyo University’s current setup, including its limitations and what it sounds like. Damn, this stuff is cool. I’m going to go get some wiimotes, lasers, and a subwoofer and see if I can’t  battle some Klingons.

Exohand - Its Haptic Baby!

Prepare to be blown away with this post!  Here at the Hub one of the things that we are all about is the coming merger of the physical world with the virtual world.  Programmable matter, moving beyond the outdated mouse and keyboard interface model, immersive environments, and so on.  Now we are here to tell you about a seriously game changing technology that is absolutely busting apart the traditional barrier between the physical and virtual worlds.  Its called haptics, and if you haven’t heard about it yet then read on and prepare to be thrilled.

Dramatic opening paragraph, I know, but I am just so excited about the possibilities of haptics that it is hard for me to hold back.  Haptics is the set of technologies that causes a person operating a device to engage in a sensory feedback loop between what the device is feeling and seeing and what the person is feeling and seeing.  Sound confusing?  Keep reading, it will make sense!

Today most graphics designers draw things on a computer the old fashioned way using the mouse and keyboard to interface with their design software.  Haptics changes all of this.  Imagine instead of a mouse that you have a wand or joystick that can serve as your paintbrush, eraser, scalpel, etc as you design an object on the computer.  As you push down on the virtual object you are designing on the computer with your joystick you can actually feel pressure push back on you from the joystick.  Its a completely different way of graphics design that will rewrite the rules of the game.  Speaking of games, haptics also has the potential to revolutionize the gaming industry. Check out this video to see what I am talking about:

After watching the video hopefully you agree that this is some pretty cool stuff!  To fully grasp the potential of this disruptive technology, you have to keep in mind that the haptic device you are controlling does not have to be in the same physical location as the object, game, or target you are manipulating.

Imagine a surgeon performing surgery on a patient half way across the world using a haptic device.  The surgeon would be able to feel, see, and even smell the organs and tissue of the remote patient with a sensitivity and realness that is indistinguishable from physically being there.  Of course the technology still has a ways to go to get to that point, but not as much as you might think.  Remember our coverage of the da vinci surgical robot?  This robot is currently taking the practice of surgery by storm as it allows surgeons to operate a suite of scalpels, cameras, pincers, and other devices to perform surgery with a level of precision and agility that exceeds natural, unaided human ability.  Several efforts are underway to augment the Da Vinci robot with haptic capabilities. And as you will see in a video at the end of this post, haptic based remote surgery has already been achieved several years ago. Yikes!

Graphics design and gaming seem to be the first killer apps that will be amenable to haptic enhancement.  The gaming industry in particular has the financial incentive and the platform to make this happen soon.  As seen in the video above, products are already on the market for the gaming industry and the real problem is not the technology, but rather the integration of device and game.  Once the gaming industry can work with the haptic device industry to create an open standard that will allow any haptic device to interface seemlessly with any game we might see an explosion in haptically enabled gaming.

Aside from the Falcon device from Novint, there are some other serious players in this field.  Two others you should check out if you want to learn more are Sensable with their Phantom line of products and Quanser with their large suite of products.  Here is an illustrative (hah!) example of the Quanser device in action:

The potential for haptics is just out of control. We’ll be keeping an eye on this emerging field continually here at the Hub, so stay tuned for updates in the future. In the meantime, haptics is a technology that lends itself very well to video demonstrations, so lets end this post with yet another video demo that is pretty cool as long as you can tune out the cheesy host: