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Jacket Lets You Feel the Movies
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Mar 19, 2009 10:03 AM
from the hands-of-doctor-manhattan dept.
from the hands-of-doctor-manhattan dept.
sp3cialk79 writes "Researchers from Philips Electronics plan to describe a jacket they have lined with vibration motors to study the effects of touch on a movie viewer's emotional response to what the characters are experiencing.
'People don't realize how sensitive we are to touch, although it is the first sense that fetuses develop in the womb,' says Paul Lemmens, a Philips senior scientist who will be presenting research done using the jacket at the IEEE-sponsored 2009 World Haptics Conference in Salt Lake City.
The jacket contains 64 independently controlled actuators distributed across the arms and torso. The actuators are arrayed in 16 groups of four and linked along a serial bus; each group shares a microprocessor. The actuators draw so little current that the jacket could operate for an hour on its two AA batteries even if the system was continuously driving 20 of the motors simultaneously."
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I think I just threw up in my mouth a little... (Score:5, Funny)
Cause I just envisioned someone wearing this jacket in a seedy "adult" theater.
Re:I think I just threw up in my mouth a little... (Score:5, Funny)
This is just the field marketable prototype. The money-maker won't be the jacket - It will be the boxer-briefs.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Did anyone else of you read the title as "Jacking lets you feel the movies"?
I instantly thought of porn at that moment...
Ok, I always instantly thing of porn...
With everything... ;)
Re: (Score:2)
Also... it mages me mix up the k and g sometimes...
Re:I think I just threw up in my mouth a little... (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, I always instantly thing of porn...
With everything... ;)
Oh hey Hurricane78, fancy seeing you here! Your mom called earlier - told me she packed your lunchbox last night but forgot to give it to you, and it's still in the kitchen if you want to go pick it up. Oh, she also said you'll have to go in the back door as the front has jammed shut.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Cause I just envisioned someone wearing this jacket in a seedy "adult" theater.
Every new technology will first be used to find new and interesting ways of getting ourselves off. We really haven't changed all that much since we started walking upright, have we? ;)
Re:I think I just threw up in my mouth a little... (Score:4, Insightful)
What does walking upright [wikipedia.org] have to do with it?!
Well, it frees up our hands for "other" purposes ;)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't worry, in any adult theater, there's a strict "jacket off" policy.
Re:I think I just threw up in my mouth a little... (Score:4, Insightful)
Heck with a "seedy" theater. a regular theater and I'm going ....EEEEEEEEEW!!!
Have you seen how disgusting your fellow humans are? when your feet stick to the floor in a theater and you find booger encrusted seats.. No thanks, I'm not putting on any jacket that some gross sweaty stinkbomb wore last...
There is a reason they always keep the lights low in theaters.. so you dont get gross and puke all over the place from what's all over your seat.
Parent
Haptics are fun, I hear. (Score:2)
(The form factor's pretty terrible, though. Need to get one of those LilyPad Arduinos or something, and tiiny motors, and make it unnoticeable to the passerby...)
As important? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
They got it working and then realized they really shouldn't have.
That, or like most of us they realized that smells are formed by discrete chemicals which would need to be kept in supply and would require the theater to be "hosed down" often to ensure that "slightly sulfer" smell from the Dante's Peak remake isn't still lingering around when the romantic comedy I Want to Cook Your Eggs plays.
Re:As important? (Score:4, Funny)
Unlike with the rumblesuit, smell-o-vision would be an absolutely horrible idea for porn.
Parent
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Old hat (Score:2)
Caution Required. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Caution Required. (Score:4, Funny)
Or Brokeback mountain.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
"OOooo, gettin' frisky are we?"
-- Fat Bastard, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
PeeWee Herman (Score:5, Funny)
From which person's point of view? (Score:2)
Part of the fun of movies is that sometimes you switch which person you're relating to most. This kind of device would kind of have to make a choice for you...
But I do think action movies might be serious fun. It's more like one of those 3D Disney Theater experiences...
I would not want to see Rocky with one of these, though. Ug. Ow. Ooof.
Re: (Score:2)
Why not the cammera's. Just because you 'feel' for a character doesn't mean you want to 'feel' them. It'd be enough to enjoy the rush of standing '2 feet' from the action while they took the hits.
Novel uses (Score:5, Insightful)
The single best use of this device would be to constrict and asphyxiate anyone in the cinema who insists on talking or fidgeting or generally disrupting others during the film. I would be especially in favour of its use on disruptive children, of all ages.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Children should never, ever, be taken anywhere where they are expected to act like an adult. They're not going to learn social skills in the cinema, or in a church service, or on an airplane with a captive audience. They'll learn them in a playground, or in a school, or somewhere where they are not expected to act like they're 30+ years of age.
Does th
Feel-a-vision? (Score:2)
It was either "Kentucky Fried Movie" or "Amazon Women on the Moon" that had a funny skit called Feel-a-vision. An usher performed the 'feeling' part for the patron - the first movie was a detective mystery; the second was announced as Deep Throat (at which point the movie patron ran away at great speed). Someone who remembers it better should chime in with the details - the motto of the decade seems to be "Everything old is new again, this time with computers!"
Insert obvious teledildonics comment here. (Score:2)
Or porn jokes. "Lawnmower Man" references. Etc.
Old Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Reminds me of the 'Feelies' in Huxley's 'Brave New World'. It will probably end up being mainly used in the same fashion. (i.e. for porn)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You beat me to it. Besides (porn etc.), this will add up to humanity loosing a or the sense reality, or, from a different perspective, the subset of 'reality' (still) shared among most will be further diminished.
CC.
Obligatory Kentucky Fried Movie Reference (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Just watched it again the other night. Amazing how funny (and oddly dead-on) it is after all these years.
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Touching people over IP (Score:2)
Touching people [t11s.com] over IP....
Screw that (Score:2)
If you want to feel the movies, get a kickass sound system. Your whole ROOM will vibrate!
Games? (Score:5, Interesting)
A similar jacket may make an interesting game feedback device.
The thump of a bullet hitting your back in a shooter would be nifty directional feedback. A tap on the shoulder in the dark of a horror game could be startling. The grip on your arm of a frightened refugee you're escorting through a combat zone, an opponent trying to tickle you in a fighting game as a distraction. And of course the same feedback scenarios mentioned in TFA, just in games rather than movies.
Of course, the cost would probably relegate such a thing to a niche market, but it'd be fun component t'play around with in a game's design.
Re:Games? (Score:5, Funny)
"The thump of a bullet hitting your back in a shooter would be nifty directional feedback"
Yeah, that's like the first thing they teach you in the Army. Always turn your back to the enemy. If a hostile is dumb enough to shoot you, you can easily extrapolate their location from the force and angle of penetration.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, that's like the first thing they teach you in the Army. Always turn your back to the enemy. If a hostile is dumb enough to shoot you, you can easily extrapolate their location from the force and angle of penetration.
Yeah, I remember that drill, always right after rocket-jump exercises and just before first aid.
People don't? (Score:2)
People^WLonely scientists don't realize how sensitive we are to touch
FTFY.
Shades of the Disaster movies (Score:2)
don't think I need a jacket... (Score:2)
don't think I need a jacket to feel the movies....shoot....my feet (technically my shoes) already feel the stick floors, my back and butt feel the crappy seats, my ears feel the pain of idiots who don't shut the hell up when the movie starts, my eyes feel the pain when watching endless amounts of advertising....all starts with my wallet feeling lighter.
besides, I'm sure there are some movies, u don't want to feel....(the new street fighter movie comes to mind)
Gloves (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Send it back (Score:5, Funny)
I think you're grossly underestimating popular cinema's appetite for overstimulation.
Parent
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Re:Send it back (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but that's alright, the first movies that implement it will do it the same cheap way they did the 3d in Superman Returns. The jacket will only work for three one minute scenes in the entire movie.
Parent
Actually - no... I was thinking... (Score:2)
...can you also sit and lean back while wearing that jacket or do you have to stand still with your hands to the sides like in the TFA?
Or will that break the actuators.
Re: (Score:2)
Google "teldildonics" (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
nazi grammar fail [wiktionary.org]
However some would rightly say it foetuses.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)