The Future Interfaces Group have developed a new haptic feedback device using ultrasonic transducers to simulate a sense of touch on mouths. Photo / Carnegie Melon University's Future Interfaces Group
The Future Interfaces Group have developed a new haptic feedback device using ultrasonic transducers to simulate a sense of touch on mouths. Photo / Carnegie Melon University's Future Interfaces Group
One piece of technology that I have never got on with is Virtual Reality. Not the three-dimensional audiovisual sensation per se which I'm sure will be the norm in not such a distant future, but goggles and masks you have to wear currently to experience it.
This is nodoubt an unpopular opinion to hold while the Metaverse develops, but who in their right mind thought that wearing chunky, diving mask sized goggles that blank out the real world was a good user experience?
Some years ago when the technology started to appear, I saw with my own eyes, having taken off the VR goggles, why the concept was not a little dumb: an editor for a competing tech publication landed a decent jab to the jaw of one of the people demonstrating VR for us.
Said editor couldn't see the person running the demo while playing a wild sword fighting game, looking ridiculous with flailing arms holding two plastic controllers.
I tried the same sword fighting game and quickly felt claustrophobic in the VR gear which got really hot and sweaty too. Yes, there's VR Juha kompromat from that event, but I'm not publishing it here.
Like in 2016 when Myer in Sydney partnered with eBay to create a virtual department store. There was quite a bit of media coverage of that, with a promised 12,500 products to ogle at through 15,000 free "shopticals".
The "shopticals" are cardboard boxes that you stick a smartphone into, and put on your head, in front of your eyes. I should say "were" perhaps, as apart from a bunch of media releases and news articles, the virtual department store appears to have gone from both Myer's site and eBay.
I've tried similar cardboard and smartphone combos, and they're even more uncomfortable than for example the Oculus masks, and mess up your hair and make-up if you wear them.
Augmented Reality or AR seems a better idea. The glasses or goggles can be smaller and lighter, you don't get shut out from the world by wearing them, although the required camera to capture the surroundings does add a certain "glasshole" creepiness.
AR isn't as immersive as VR though, and the latter is still being worked on. Amazon for example has sweat guards for the Oculus Quest 2 VR mask. They look like superhero masks, are supposed to be breathable and protect your skin and ... no. Just please no.
The ultrasonic inducers can be used to simulate brushing teeth. Photo / Carnegie Melon University's Future Interfaces Group
But wait, there's more: three researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States have come up with a very clever mouth haptics system for VR.
Haptics are systems that provide tactile feedback through vibrations, so that you know when you're doing something. Apple and other smartphone vendors have devices with haptic feedback screens, and you get the buzzy feels in joysticks for flight simulators and racing games as well.
That's just for your fingers, and there are haptic vests, air cannons and other over the top gear to get that VR feeling.
What about your mouth though? As the CMU researchers note, "the mouth is of particular interest, as it is a close second in tactile sensitivity to the fingertips".
Mouth haptics sounds like a great idea for, umm, drinking in virtual bars perhaps, but how could it be achieved?
" ... consumers do not want to cover their entire face, let alone put something up against (or into) their mouths," the researchers note, before showing pictures of some developed VR mouth haptics devices that look like the stuff of nightmares.
Instead, the researchers took an existing mask and added to its bottom 64 ultrasonic transducers that emit 40 kiloHertz sounds (a frequency well above what humans can hear) at high sound pressure levels of 141 decibels.
If the paper is to be believed, the sensory results from the fairly unobtrusive ultrasonic tech were excellent. Test subjects could feel raindrops, mud splats, pushing through cobwebs and crawling bugs.
There are probably some use-cases for which mouth haptics and similar tech is justified, but it feels dystopian to put on a mask to experience what's out there in a goggle-less reality.
Even though I'm in awe of the ultrasonic mouth haptics implementation, which will probably come to a VR mask on your face soon, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the clever tech gets used in a dark fashion.
Also, weren't we meant to have three dimensional holograms by now?
