latta@sting.Berkeley.EDU (Craig R. Latta) (01/16/91)
It seems to me that the only way of achieving a true,
three-dimensional system of tactile feeback is by using
superconducting repulsion. The user would wear a suit covered/embedded
with small, tracked filaments, which are repulsed by superconducting
magnetic elements on all six sides of a room. The user would be
able to be forced to any position in the room, given a strong enough
repulsion.
Virtual objects in three-dimensions would be created by creating
the proper repulsions on the contacting parts of the user, enough to
overpower the user out of the field of the object. Further, the user would
be able to walk, run, jump, or whatever "in place," as the repulsion
counteracts all movements, as a sort of three-dimensional treadmill.
Each of these filaments would also need to be able to be
temperature-controlled somehow, to convey heat and cold. The filaments
would also need to be awfully fine to convey texture.
Are these ideas completely crazy? Would the electromagnetic fields
created be dangerous to the user, assuming this is even possible?
-C
p.s. As long as we cannot eat in cyberspace, I think the whole idea is a
bit overrated.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Craig R. Latta "Instant monotony!
latta@xcf.Berkeley.EDU Just ad nauseum!"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------brucec%phoebus.labs.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET (Bruce Cohen;;50-662;LP=A;) (01/17/91)
In article <1991Jan16.015925.24590@agate.berkeley.edu> latta@sting.Berkeley.EDU (Craig R. Latta) writes: > > p.s. As long as we cannot eat in cyberspace, I think the whole idea is a > bit overrated. > Ah, but we can. Use real food, and have the virtual environment replace the visual and/or tactile sensations of the food with something different, if you really want exotic food. Just like allowing you to pick up a priceless Ming vase by having a cheap East Asian copy on the table and overlaying it with a image of the Ming. Oh, you wanted to change the taste of the food too? Wait for release 2. But be sure you get the bug-free version; you might not like the overtone of diesel-flavored tunafish that the gustatory simulation software adds to the caviar ;-). -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Speaker-to-managers, aka Bruce Cohen, Computer Research Lab email: brucec@tekchips.labs.tek.com Tektronix Laboratories, Tektronix, Inc. phone: (503)627-5241 M/S 50-662, P.O. Box 500, Beaverton, OR 97077
jwtlai@watcgl.waterloo.edu (Jim W Lai) (01/17/91)
In article <1991Jan16.015925.24590@agate.berkeley.edu> latta@sting.Berkeley.EDU (Craig R. Latta) writes: >p.s. As long as we cannot eat in cyberspace, I think the whole idea is a > bit overrated. Sensual feedback? Does this mean people want to simulate sex with Marilyn Monroe, Rudolph Valentino, or other critters in cyberspace? Or did you mean sensory feedback? If the former, I'm sure the project will be technically challenging. You'd undoubtedly have a lot of volunteers for beta-testing. And this would be a cool way to get funding from decadent rich people who have nothing better to do with their time and money. [Moderator's Comment: [Although this comment verges on the supercilious, I am posting it because it is a sentiment commonly expressed away from this newsgroup. I was called the other day by Copley Radio Syndication, who wanted to do a story on "virtual sex." "But no one is doing virtual sex, except maybe on TV, I replied. Don't you want to hear about the industrial symposium we're planning and real prospects for the VR medium?" "No," my interlocutor replied, "That's too complex. We're radio, you know?" and said good-bye. [So it's worth discussing the ways about which our field is spoken. -- Bob]
latta@sting.Berkeley.EDU (Craig R. Latta) (01/17/91)
Bruce Cohen writes: > Ah, but we can (eat in cyberspace) Use real food, and have the virtual environ ment > replace > the visual and/or tactile sensations of the food with something different, > if you really want exotic food. Just like allowing you to pick up a > priceless Ming vase by having a cheap East Asian copy on the table and > overlaying it with a image of the Ming. That's silly. Then the VR hardware includes an arbitrary amount of likely expensive food. > Oh, you wanted to change the taste of the food too? Wait for release 2. > But be sure you get the bug-free version; you might not like the overtone > of diesel-flavored tunafish that the gustatory simulation software adds to > the caviar ;-). No, really. How can a transparent sense of taste be effected without disrupting speech or using brain surgery? Another disappointing thing about VR is that the basic human form is changed from the norm to something with equipment stuck all over it. You can't convincingly run your hands all over someone in cyberspace. And what about my original ideas about tactile feedback? Does anyone know anything about superconducting repulsion? -C -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Craig R. Latta "Instant monotony! latta@xcf.Berkeley.EDU Just ad nauseum!" -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
doug@eris.berkeley.edu (Doug Merritt) (02/06/91)
In article <1991Jan16.235717.21587@agate.berkeley.edu> latta@sting.Berkeley.EDU (Craig R. Latta) writes: > > And what about my original ideas about tactile feedback? Does anyone >know anything about superconducting repulsion? This is something I've been pondering for many years, and I see several essential problems: 1) The "projected magnetic surface" cannot have a sharply defined boundary the way that real life objects do, because the repulsion falls off as the square of the distance. For a sharp boundary, you need a much sharper discontinuity, where the repulsion falls from "very high" to "very low" over a very small distance (say a millimeter). The inverse square law instead would give a very spongey surface. (Although see #4 below.) 2) The surface's feature resolution would be mostly two-dimensional rather than three dimensional. At first that doesn't seem so bad; it perhaps sounds like a spongey version of those bed-of-pins sometimes used by artists (and hands-on museums) to make pictures. But there'd be a further difference -- there would be little effective resistance to lateral movements. I.e. it would be spongey side-to-side in addition to being spongey back-to-forward. 3) Along the same lines, using the analogy of a hologram to try to make this work better fails. There's no analogy to "collimation" and "coherence" in these static magnetic (or electric) fields, unlike propagated light. This means you can't have a "reference beam" to with which to create a reconstructed object wavefront. 4) Taking that yet one step further, all that implies the problem that the resolution of the features in the "projected surface" falls off with the square of the distance as well! This is probably the most severe problem of all; it implies not just that the magnetic strength of each "pixel" in the projecting surface must vary with the square of the desired linear strength (an attempted fix, or one that might help reduce lateral sponginess at the expense of forward resolution), but further that the *absolute* "projected pixel" size will grow with the square of the distance. (I admit to a faint hope that there may be some lens-like mechanism that could refocus the projected "image", but I don't currently see any way to make that work.) 5) Since we're dealing with high strength magnetic fields, there's an additional complication of induced current flow in any metallic objects within the field during operator/participant movement/motion. Such problems could, for instance, burn out circuitry in the data suit. 6) Some people think that magnetic fields cause cancer or other health problems. This may or may not be true, but it might be a complication with your lab's insurance policy. :-) In summary, I will not claim that there's no way to make something like this work, but I will say that there are some extremely difficult problems in the way. Doug -- Doug Merritt doug@eris.berkeley.edu (ucbvax!eris!doug) or uunet.uu.net!crossck!dougm