Getting closer to a functional holodeck
Disney’s Crazy Invention Lets You Feel Phantom Objects Floating In Air
Microsoft’s Kinect is an amazing device. It can track virtually any motion you make, allowing your real body to interact with an amazing invented world. There’s just one catch: You can’t actually feel anything.
Aireal is the result of research by University of Illinois PhD student Rajinder Sodhi and Disney Reseach’s Ivan Poupyrev. When set by your television or connected to an iPad, this diminutive machine will puff air rings that allow you to actually feel objects and textures in midair--no special controllers or gloves required.
"The sensation is quite pleasant," Poupyrev tells Co.Design. "It’s not like air blowing onto your body. The air ring is a traveling low-pressure bubble. When it collapses, the air from outside rushes in, and it creates force at this particular point. It’s [a] very localized, sharp puff of air."
The machine itself is essentially a set of five speakers in a box--subwoofers that track your body through IR, then fire low frequencies through a nozzle to form donut-like vortices (I imagine the system as a cigar-smoking Microsoft Kinect).
"You have an enclosure with a hole, and you push the air out rapidly," Poupyrev explains. "Because of the friction, some molecules of the air move slower than others. So it spins, and the ring will fly in a stable direction."
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http://www.fastcodesign.com/1673054/disneys-crazy-invention-lets-you-feel-phantom-objects-floating-in-air#1
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