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@tomcarter259-blog
The Haptic Tattoo
This is the most bizzarre haptic feedback technique I've seen. Nokia have patented the Haptic Tattoo. This idea is that you get a tattoo using ferromagnetic ink, and then your smartphone can create a magnetic field which stimulates the ink. This means that an incoming text or call would vibrate your tattoo.
If this catches on, I'm staying well away from airports, MRI scanners and kids with magnets!
GyroTab: Haptic Feedback Using Torque
Among haptic feedback projects, GyroTab is rare in that is isn't providing vibro-tactile feedback. Instead they have fitted a slim gyroscope to handheld tablets and mobile phones. This provides a force pulling the device back to the neutral position. My favourite example was a racing game where the user steered their vehicle by tilting the device. GyroTab will always oppose a user's movements giving the vehicle a sense of inertia.
While GyroTab relies on the user input to generate the feedback, and as such cannot provide feedback for static events like notifications, I can see it being integrated in future devices along with a vibro-tactile feedback system. Also, I really want to play the racing game! Have a look at their project page for more details and a video.
ZeroTouch is an optical sensing technique for touch screen interactions. It uses an array of IR LEDs and optical sensors to build up an occlusion pattern. The beauty of this technique is in how well is scales. A bigger screen simply requires more LEDs and sensors, enabling ZeroTouch to be fitted to existing large displays. Capacitive sensing becomes comparatively expensive for large displays.
One of my favourite papers at CHI 2012 was Touché by Munehiko Sato, Ivan Poupyrev and Chris Harrison. Touché uses a technique called Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing to greatly enhance capacitive touch sensing. The system is able to recognise complex arrangements of contact points, such as a four finger pinch, firm grip and flat hand.
On top of that, Touché works on ordinary objects with the addition of a single wire, enabling detailed touch recognition on door handles, tables and even under water.
Watch the video above to get an idea. Their paper can be downloaded from their project page.
The Johnny Cash Project
I'm back from CHI 2012 in Austin, Texas, where I presented my Ultra-Tangibles paper. There were many great projects and demos, some of which I will post up here.
But first I wanted to share this project, which was mentioned in a keynote presentation. It is a crowdsourced music video for Johnny Cash's song "Ain't No Grave". The website provides every single frame of footage of Johnny Cash and drawing tools to enable you to re-draw a frame. Anyone can have a go and all of the finished frames are added to the video. By now, most frames have at least 10 different versions so each time you view the video it will be different.
The combination of the song and jumpy, hand-drawn frames creates a powerful image. Have a watch here.
Sneak peek at the new BIG website
In between writing papers and playing with ultrasound I have been working on a complete overhaul of the Bristol Interaction and Graphics group's website. It's a custom Wordpress theme and uses the Pods content management system.
My main aims were:
Create a light, clean look
Provide a simple CMS so lab members are more likely to post updates on their work
Design a consistent user experience across the site
Present simple navigation between related areas of the site in order to lower the bounce rate
Each lab member will have their own profile, bringing together all of their projects, publications and information. I dislike how impersonal filling out a contact form is on a website so there is no single form or email address to contact the lab. Instead, each person has a button underneath their profile picture, which presents a form to send them an email. This way you know who you are talking to, what they look like and what their background is.
Lab members will be able to offer links to their haunts elsewhere on the internet.
Project pages will have links to the profiles of the people who worked on that project. This makes it easy to contact the person responsible for a project you like or check out their other work.
The key information on upcoming seminars (when, who and where), is pulled out and displayed clearly down the side.
The new site should be going live on Monday at big.cs.bris.ac.uk so check back then!
The Soundlazer creates a focussed beam of sound using ultrasound carrier waves. It uses similar hardware and techniques to my UltraHaptics project for creating haptic feedback in mid-air. It also smashed it's funding target on Kickstarter. Check it out!
Replacing the annoying sat nav lady with haptic feedback
I like this steering wheel AT&T and Carnegie Mellon University have created. It uses a series of vibration motors to give you turn-by-turn directions from your sat nav. The driver is informed of a turn by a clockwise or counter-clockwise vibration pattern, which gets faster the closer you get. Now your music won't be constantly interrupted by an annoying woman saying "Make a U-turn".
Photos and more details on The Verge.
This amazing tabletop tower defence game was a student project in the Media Computing Group at RWTH Aachen University. It makes great use of tangible towers and multi touch input. I love how hands on they made the towers, creating a fast paced game that is engaging for multiple players.
Some more info can be found on their project page.
A new Tumblog
After concluding that someone doing a PhD in Computer Science should probably have a blog I looked into the best platform for my needs. It turns out that "Tumblr" is about to overtake "Blog" in Google searches so headfirst into the Tumblverse I go!
I will be posting updates on my research into haptic feedback and any exciting new projects that I discover along the way. Take a deep breath. Here we go...