#haptic interface

Haptic Art is a company that specializes in creating printable 3-D models of paintings. In this way they are managing to make visual art accessible for visually impared people. This makes a painting more immersive, since there is haptic feedback. However it isn’t a “tangible painting.” Instead, can you imagine touching Mona Lisa’s skin? 

An extremely interesting video that provides great insight and explains how haptic technology works.

“Keeping in mind that blind and visually impaired people see by touch, haptic feedback is configured to let them decide which vibrotactile actuators they want to use. In other words, letting them switch between their way of seeing – with either the finger tips, palms or hand, making the experience truly immersive for them all.”

Sources: Choi, Inrak, Heather Culbertson, Mark R. Miller, Alex Olwal and Sean Follmer. “Grabity: A Wearable Haptic Interface for Simulating Weight and Grasping in Virtual Reality”,  Stanford University Department of Mechanical Engineering. http://shape.stanford.edu/research/grabity/.

Actuated shape output provides novel opportunities for experiencing, creating and manipulating 3D content in the physical world. While various shape displays have…

Description: AIREAL is a new low cost, highly scalable haptic technology that delivers expressive tactile sensations in mid air. AIREAL enables users to feel virtual objects, experience dynamically varying textures and receive feedback on full body gestures, all without requiring the user to wear a physical device. AIREAL is designed to use a vortex, a ring of air that can travel large distances while keeping its shape and speed. When the vortex hits a user’s skin, the low pressure system inside a vortex collapses and imparts a force the user can feel. The AIREAL technology is almost entirely 3D printed using a 3D printed enclosure, flexible nozzle and a pan and tilt gimbal structure capable of a 75-degree targeting field. Five actuators are mounted around the enclosure which displaces air from the enclosed volume, through the flexible nozzle and into the physical environment. The actuated flexible nozzle allows a vortex to be precisely delivered to any location in 3D space.

Description: Super Cilia Skin is a literal membrane separating a computer from its environment. Like our skin, it is haptic I/O membrane that can sense and simulate movement and wind flow.  Their intention is to have it be universally applied to sheath any surface.  As a display, it can mimic another person’s gesture over a distance via a form of tangible telepresence.  A hand-sized interface covered with Super Cilia Skin would produce subtle changes in surface texture that feel much like a telepresent "butterfly kiss." A small object surrounded with Super Cilia Skin could propel itself across the floor, or stop to create visually expressive changes in surface. Conversely, a Super Cilia Skin surface could propel objects across it using mechanical gestures like the movements of a centipede’s feet.  On an architectural scale, a facade covered with Super Cilia Skin could represent the "wake" of a local wind pattern billowing up and down the surface during the day generating energy.  As a more general display surface, a Super Cilia Skinned floor could trace movement over one’s house or weather patterns over the entire state of Massachusetts.  This sensibility is intended to pervade a sense of relationships between local and global conditions.