(Credit:
Crave Asia)
Most of us are familiar with haptics on touch-screen phones. The feedback technology uses vibrating pulses to replace the tactility of, for example, pressing a physical button. At the recent computer graphics event Siggraph Asia 2009, a team of researchers from Japan's University of Tsukuba demonstrated what they can do with haptics by letting users "feel" a remote object.
The prototype system comprises a laser range finder, computer, and haptics generator. By placing the device on a glass casing (we are very familiar with this as many companies like to put their prototype devices in a see-no-touch environment) and using the laser to measure the distance from the panel to the actual object, the user can "feel" the latter via the pulses that are generated.
According to the literature (PDF), the reaction force is determined by the distance between the handheld device and the actual object. Users supposedly can feel details such as texture when the magnification factor is increased. The researchers say the system can be used for educating viewers valuable exhibits and inspection of engineering products. We just want to get one of these before we attend another mega-scale event like CES.
(Source: Crave Asia)
(Credit:
URC)
The URC MX-5000 universal remote looks like a typical universal remote control. But this $1,500 clicker is a rare gem packed with a 2.7-inch haptic feedback touch screen, Wi-Fi, and radio frequency communication. Haptic? Think of it as making onscreen keys behave like real buttons with the familiar tactile feel and audible clicks, a feature available on some touch-screen mobile phones. There's no official word on the actual implementation, and details on the MX-5000's full capabilities are pretty lean.
Even if you're willing to meet the ridiculously marked-up asking price, this is one remote you can't pick up in mega electronics stores. That's because the MX-5000 is an A/V professional-centric product for custom installations and requires complex programming via the control software. You'll probably have to sound out your local A/V installer to check the availability of this controller.
(Source: Crave Asia)
The haptic feedback patent, if approved, would bring the iPhone in line with rival handsets that provide localized tactile feedback.
(Credit: CNET )Three patent applications by Apple were published Thursday, and they cover technologies including haptics, fingerprint recognition, and RFID.
The haptic feedback patent, if approved, would bring the iPhone (and possibly other Apple devices) in line with rival handsets, which already provide localized tactile feedback in, for example, an onscreen soft keyboard.
Haptic technology gives people sensory feedback--in the form of a vibration or pressure--when they use a touch screen. Essentially, it makes touching a key on a touch screen more akin to pressing a real button.
The fingerprint recognition patent does not really have to do with authentication and security, but rather with identifying which fingers are in use, so as to associate different functions with different digits.
The RFID reader patent would see RFID-communicating circuitry integrated with the circuitry behind the touch screen itself.
All the above are just applications, though, so it could be a long while before we see any of this functionality built into iPhones or other Apple devices.
David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.
SAN JOSE, Calif.--Artificial Muscle believes that when you touch your computer or phone, it should touch back.
The Silicon Valley company is working on putting haptic feedback in a variety of devices, from laptops to touch-screen phones. Though forced feedback isn't a new concept, the way this company is going about it is different. It showed off some of its technologies at the Interactive Displays 2009 conference here.
Instead of using the vibration motor in a phone to give feedback from a screen, the company has developed and patented an electroactive polymer that expands when it receives an electronic signal. In this case, it's an audio signal, which the actuator, as it is called, receives. Special software tells the actuator to give off a different sort of feedback depending on what a person is touching on the screen.
The idea is that putting feedback like this into phones or computers for playing games, dialing numbers, typing e-mails, and browsing the Web will "enhance the usage experience, so it's not just visual and it's not just audio," said Peter Gise, product manager for Artificial Muscle.
The actuator is very thin (as seen in video below), and can fit into many small handheld devices, or beneath a touch pad on a laptop computer. Gise said they're also targeting Netbooks, since the actuator is "only a couple dollars" each and wouldn't contribute too much to the overall cost of the notoriously low-cost devices.
They've been officially developing haptic technology for six months, and so far they have yet to seal any deals to put it inside consumer devices. In the meantime, check out the brief demo in the video below.
Samsung spilled the beans on the new P3 MP3 player at the company's CES 2009 press conference. As an update to Samsung's popular P2, the P3 shares many of its predecessor's features, including a 3-inch WQVGA touch screen, DNSe sound enhancement, audio and video playback, photo viewer, FM radio, voice recording, and Bluetooth capabilities such as phone pairing and stereo
...Read the full post at CNET's CES 2009 blog.
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The haptic touch screen user interface of the Cowon P5 looks much more friendly than the gloomy GUI found on its predecessor.
(Credit: Cowon)
Cowon has released photos and specs of a new portable video player
dubbed the P5. As a successor to their Q5W mega-gadget released last
year, the P5 adds a few new tricks to the Q5W's features and wraps it all up in a less intimidating design.
Offered in silver, red, and black, the Cowon P5 includes a 5-inch touch screen with a 800x480 resolution and a new haptic feedback feature. In the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink tradition of the Q5W, the Cowon P5 includes stereo Bluetooth, FM radio, TV-output (component, composite, and S-Video), stereo speakers, USB and USB-host ports. Noticeably missing from the P5 is the Q5W's built-in Wi-Fi, however, Cowon's Korean Web site seems to imply that a USB Wi-Fi dongle can be added to enable Internet browsing.
Like any Cowon product, the P5 promises outstanding file playback support, including MP3, WMA, ASF, OGG, WAV, FLAC, APE, and Musepack on the audio end, AVI, ASF, WMV, MPG, OGM, DivX, Xvid, MPEG4, and WMV9 for video, and JPG, BMP, PNG, and RAW photo support.
The core of the P5 is built around a 700MHz RMI Alchemy AU1250 processor with 128Mb of RAM and either 40GB, 60GB, or 80GB hard drive configurations. Cowon rates the P5's internal battery at an impressive 9 hours for video playback, but a mere 14 hours for audio.
The Cowon P5 is still running off the embedded Windows CE 5 operating system that failed to impress us in the Q5W, but it appears Cowon has overhauled their own skinned interface with a lighter, friendlier design that looks similar to the interface we liked so well on the Cowon A3. Let's just hope the new haptic feedback system makes the P5's onscreen keyboard easier to use than its predecessor's.
No pricing or availability has been announced for the U.S., but according to Generation MP3, Korea will see the P5 by the end of the month starting around $430.
Intel CTO Justin Rattner on Thursday showed off this 3D input device that includes 'haptic' force-feedback technology.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)SAN FRANCISCO--Most folks who try the Second Life virtual world grimace as the primitive 3D imagery drags its way onto their screens. Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner, though, smacks his lips with anticipation.
The chipmaker, always on the lookout for something that will give people a reason to buy a new PC, has reason to be excited about Second Life and its ilk. The technology, while still mostly for a fairly nerdy audience, has the potential to appeal to a broader audience than video games where overmuscled marines blow away aliens.
And just as significantly, Rattner said in a speech here Thursday at Intel Developer Forum, virtual worlds will stress out servers as well as PCs.
Intel has also eagerly anticipated some processor-taxing technologies that have come to fruition, including streaming audio and video, and some that haven't, such as speech recognition.
Rattner showed statistics that indicated a PC's processor bumps up to 20 percent utilization while browsing the Web, while its graphics processor doesn't even break above 1 percent.
Intel CTO Justin Rattner
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)But running Second Life--even with today's coarse graphics--pushes those to 70 percent for the main processor and 35 to 70 percent for the graphics processor, he said. The Google Maps Web site and Google Earth software pose intermediate demands.
Running a virtual worlds server is vastly more computationally challenging, though, when compared with 2D Web sites and even massively multiplayer online games such as Eve Online. An Eve Online server can handle 34,420 users at a time, but Second Life maxes a server out with just 160 users. Network capacity also is much more heavily used.
In addition, virtual worlds exercise parts of a processor such as math calculation engines that are idle when handling Web sites.
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