Levitating Haptics Joystick Gives Good Feedback 70
SubComdrTaco writes "A controller developed at Carnegie Mellon University allows computer users to
manipulate three-dimensional images and explore virtual environments not only through sight and sound, but by using their sense of touch. It simulates a hand's responses to touch because it relies on a part that floats in a magnetic field rather than on mechanical linkages and cables, according to Ralph L. Hollis, a Carnegie Mellon professor who developed the controller.
The controller — like a joystick topped with a block that can be grasped — has just one moving part and rests in a bowl-like structure connected to a computer. Two of the controllers can be used simultaneously to pick up and move virtual objects on a monitor.
In a demonstration Tuesday, visitors to Hollis' lab were invited to move an image of a pin across a plate of various textures, causing the controller to bump along ripples, vibrate across fine striations and glide across smooth areas.
On one computer, users could "feel" the contours of a virtual rabbit.
Hollis said his researchers had built 10 of the devices, six of which were to be sent to other universities across the country and in Canada, and that a new company, Butterfly Haptics, would begin marketing the device in June or July.
The controller, which Hollis said will cost "much less" than $50,000, could enable a would-be surgeon to operate on a virtual human organ and sense the texture of tissue or give a designer the feeling of fitting a part into a virtual jet engine, or might also be used to convey the feeling of wind under the wings of unmanned military planes."
X-Rated Headline (Score:5, Funny)
This has got to be the dirtiest headline Slashdot has ever written.
Save up to 50% or more! (Score:5, Funny)
Well gee, that provides a lot of information.
Cheap! (Score:3, Funny)
Now I have hopes of only having to sell my car.
The real use (Score:4, Funny)
From the article:
I think we all know that this is a euphemism for pornography
RT X-Rated FA (Score:4, Funny)
Possibly, but they'd have done better to just quote the article:
Somehow, I think this will have porn applications...
Bunny contours? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cancer (Score:2, Funny)
Or, we could blame everything on gravity. The same reasoning can conveniently be extended to any number of imagined causes. ;)