Technology: Visions of holodecks

Researchers have used projected ultrasound to create floating 3D shapes that can be seen and felt in mid-air (Photo: University of Bristol), gizmag

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Haptic is the magic word today, specifically haptic technology or haptics. At root the word means:

adjective: of or relating to the sense of touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation of objects using the senses of touch and proprioception--the reception of stimuli produced within the organism.

Tactile is a related term and a number of groups are working on making devices that offer tactile experience.

Researchers at the University of Bristol have coined the word ultrahaptics to describe their project. This article from gizmag, New ultrasound research creates holographic objects that can be seen and felt, describes their current efforts. Here's a video that explains more.

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If you would like to track the University of Bristol's Interaction and Graphics (BIG) projects, here's the BIG home page URL.

Disney Research (Disney does research?) has a video about tactile rendering of 3D features on touch surfaces, from a project by the Pittsburgh research team. Their approach uses an electro-vibration based friction display. Here's the video published on the DisneyResearchHub channel.

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Stuff, the magazine, reports on a prototype by Fujitsu that also uses ultrasonic haptic feedback, as does BIG's project.

Meanwhile MIT's Tangible Media Group is working on surfaces that actually change dimensionally. This video was published about six months ago on the MIT Media Lab channel.

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The metaverse awaits.

-- Marge

Virtual worlds: education, training and collaboration

As an explorer of virtual worlds, I like to keep up on what's happening.  Despite rumors that Second Life is dying and the metaverse has had its day, the number of virtual worlds is growing. Here's a list (2015) of the Top 10 Virtual Worlds.

Karl Kapp's post "3D Virtual Worlds are NOT Dead, Dying or Disappearing (Mar 2012)" agrees that the number of virtual worlds is growing.  In his post he discusses uses for virtual environments and lists some.  Writing about virtual worlds as suitable environments for work is Aliza Sherman at GigaOm in her article "Virtual Worlds: Immersive Training, Collaboration and Meetings (Jun 2011)".  She states:

Are virtual worlds really viable environments for work? According to a survey by Unisfair, a global provider of virtual events and business environments, usage of virtual environments is growing for marketing, training and collaboration. Surveying 550 marketers nationwide, the study revealed that 60 percent of respondents plan to increase spending on virtual events and environments this year.

The breakdown of virtual activities outlined in the survey include training (42 percent); customer engagement (36 percent); internal collaboration (34 percent); lead generation (29 percent); and networking (8 percent). Nearly half of the respondents predict an increase in “hybrid” corporate events within two years.

This article on IBM's developerWorks page talks about the company's use of Virtual Spaces to enable immersive, global collaboration.  In the summary it states that

Globalization and a challenging business environment are placing new demands on today's enterprises. Organizations that are in an increasingly distributed environment are striving to provide guidance and enablement for teams working across disparate time zones.

Other uses for virtual worlds include:

• Immersive education, such as what is described at Media Grid, and
• Health care training and eduction, such as CliniSpace.

Note: This post contains dated material.

-- Marge