force feedback

Fingertip vibrator boosts your sense of touch

Combine the words "vibrator," "touch," and "heightened sensitivity," and the subject is obvious, right? A tricked-out glove that heightens your sense of touch.

The glove, developed by Georgia Tech researchers, includes a tiny vibrator that sits on the side of your finger. Turn the vibrator so low that you don't quite notice it vibrating, and voila, your fingertip is more sensitive to touch.

Prototype tests showed that the heightened-sensitivity glove enabled people to sense lighter touches and distinguish sensory points that were closer together than they could without it. People correctly distinguished among different fineness levels of sandpaper 15 percent more often with the glove.

The glove could help surgeons and others who rely on a fine sense of touch, and it could help people with an impaired sense of touch.… Read more

Conti develops pedal to cut fuel, emissions

FRANKFURT--Continental AG is working on an accelerator pedal that helps drivers reduce fuel consumption and cut carbon dioxide emissions without requiring a distracting light or an annoying sound.

The German supplier's Accelerator Force Feedback Pedal already helps reduce rear-end collisions by applying back force to the accelerator or vibrating the pedal to encourage the driver to slow down if there is danger of an accident.

Now Continental is testing whether the so-called active pedal can do better than lights on the instrument panel or a noise to help people drive more economically.

"The first studies show that using … Read more

Gaming vest threatens to blow you away

Gadget thrill-seekers have a choice: They can either subject themselves to electrode torture as our colleague Michael Kanellos gleefully does at every opportunity, or they can try something like the virtual-reality "FPS Vest" instead.

There's good news if you should choose the latter because TMgames, which was only taking pre-orders last fall, is now selling the vest as part of a package that includes Call of Duty and 3rd Space Incursion bundled with it, according to Gadget Review. The force-feedback game vest, which was initially developed by a physician for medical research, has eight zones that supposedly … Read more

Immersion to fight Microsoft lawsuit

Immersion vowed Tuesday to fight Microsoft's breach-of-contract lawsuit regarding "haptic" technology that endows mice and joysticks with tactile feedback such as shaking and jerking.

"Immersion intends to defend this lawsuit vigorously," the San Jose, Calif.-based company said Tuesday.

Immersion sued Microsoft and Sony for patent infringement in 2002, but both suits were settled. Through a resulting sublicense agreement with Microsoft, Immersion agreed to pay Microsoft for any fee amounts from Sony in the event of a settlement with that company. That issue now is at issue in the breach-of-contract suit Microsoft filed against Immersion … Read more