A while back I encountered this Wired.com story about using simple vibrating motors on a belt and a digital compass chip to give the user direct perception of direction:
I find this concept fascinating. The idea that the brain can integrate a simple vibrating belt as an intuitive sense is incredible. A direction sense is a great idea, but I naturally immediately wonder what other ways this idea can be extended. First I wonder how many different senses can be stimulated by such a belt. Vibrating motors are obvious, but what about something more energy efficient, maybe a simple wire coil with a small spring and metal slug? This could be activated to generate a variable rate and intensity tapping sensation that would be more versatile and more energy-efficient than a shaker motor. You might also be able to incorporate small resistive heaters or electrical 'tinglers' so that multiple inputs could use the same belt. A directional sense might be manifested as tapping while speed or distance were indicated by heat or electrical tingle.
Also, there is no reason that a direction indicator belt would be limited to indicating a single cardinal direction. If integrated into a more complete system, a military video game for example, multiple tappers could be active at the same time, indicating the direction and distance to team members. While it would require extensive practice to integrate such a device, the integrated 'sixth sense' of exactly where each team member was located might give the team a significant organizational advantage. It would also allow members to more quickly know when a member has been injured or immobilized and where to find him. A real-world device would require GPS (or other location) and wireless communication technology. This is easy to provide in a video game as no battle-ready tech is required, you just need an output from the computer and game software that supports the feature.
I also imagine a feature for high-performance cars (or possibly military jets) that provide non-visual information about the performance of the vehicle. Drivers that are pushing the performance envelope of a vehicle have little attention to spare for looking down at the instrument cluster, so tactile signaling could give them a faster, more integrated perception of the vehicles performance. If the seat had embedded tappers the driver would learn to understand what the vehicle was signaling as he became familiar with the vehicle. It might signal when the driver was pushing the design parameters of the vehicle (lateral acceleration, max RPM, excessive suspension travel, etc), or when the vehicle was engaging performance enhancing features (traction control, dynamic stability, adaptive suspension, etc) so that the driver could build a faster, more intuitive sense of the vehicle, integrating it's senses into his own, extending his sense of body into the vehicle.
I find this idea not only very compelling, but easily within the reach of today's technology. A car maker, or even an after-market manufacturer, could easily integrated this sort of indicator into a vehicle with minimal effort. Many vehicles already provide this data in standard displays and in output from standard communications ports, so anyone could make a simple seat cover to add this technology to almost any vehicle.
In fact, I find this idea so interesting that I've priced out some digital compass and 3 axis accelerometer chips (about $30-$50 each) for construction of my own 'feelSpace' belt. The project may never go anywhere, depending on how much time I have, but it sure would be a cool toy.
For six weird weeks in the fall of 2004, Udo Wächter had an unerring sense of direction. Every morning after he got out of the shower, Wächter, a sysadmin at the University of Osnabrück in Germany, put on a wide beige belt lined with 13 vibrating pads — the same weight-and-gear modules that make a cell phone judder[sic]. On the outside of the belt were a power supply and a sensor that detected Earth's magnetic field. Whichever buzzer was pointing north would go off. Constantly.
"It was slightly strange at first," Wächter says, "though on the
bike, it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. He learned to deal with the stares he got in the library, his belt humming like a distant chain saw. Deep into the experiment, Wächter says, "I suddenly realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home. Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new place." (Read more)
I find this concept fascinating. The idea that the brain can integrate a simple vibrating belt as an intuitive sense is incredible. A direction sense is a great idea, but I naturally immediately wonder what other ways this idea can be extended. First I wonder how many different senses can be stimulated by such a belt. Vibrating motors are obvious, but what about something more energy efficient, maybe a simple wire coil with a small spring and metal slug? This could be activated to generate a variable rate and intensity tapping sensation that would be more versatile and more energy-efficient than a shaker motor. You might also be able to incorporate small resistive heaters or electrical 'tinglers' so that multiple inputs could use the same belt. A directional sense might be manifested as tapping while speed or distance were indicated by heat or electrical tingle.
Also, there is no reason that a direction indicator belt would be limited to indicating a single cardinal direction. If integrated into a more complete system, a military video game for example, multiple tappers could be active at the same time, indicating the direction and distance to team members. While it would require extensive practice to integrate such a device, the integrated 'sixth sense' of exactly where each team member was located might give the team a significant organizational advantage. It would also allow members to more quickly know when a member has been injured or immobilized and where to find him. A real-world device would require GPS (or other location) and wireless communication technology. This is easy to provide in a video game as no battle-ready tech is required, you just need an output from the computer and game software that supports the feature.
I also imagine a feature for high-performance cars (or possibly military jets) that provide non-visual information about the performance of the vehicle. Drivers that are pushing the performance envelope of a vehicle have little attention to spare for looking down at the instrument cluster, so tactile signaling could give them a faster, more integrated perception of the vehicles performance. If the seat had embedded tappers the driver would learn to understand what the vehicle was signaling as he became familiar with the vehicle. It might signal when the driver was pushing the design parameters of the vehicle (lateral acceleration, max RPM, excessive suspension travel, etc), or when the vehicle was engaging performance enhancing features (traction control, dynamic stability, adaptive suspension, etc) so that the driver could build a faster, more intuitive sense of the vehicle, integrating it's senses into his own, extending his sense of body into the vehicle.
I find this idea not only very compelling, but easily within the reach of today's technology. A car maker, or even an after-market manufacturer, could easily integrated this sort of indicator into a vehicle with minimal effort. Many vehicles already provide this data in standard displays and in output from standard communications ports, so anyone could make a simple seat cover to add this technology to almost any vehicle.
In fact, I find this idea so interesting that I've priced out some digital compass and 3 axis accelerometer chips (about $30-$50 each) for construction of my own 'feelSpace' belt. The project may never go anywhere, depending on how much time I have, but it sure would be a cool toy.
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