Paul Raven @ 27-05-2008
In an effort to deepen the experience of humans interacting with robots, Steve Yohanan has been concentrating on the largely-neglected fifth sense of touch. The Haptic Creature is a robot rabbit that only communicates through a haptic interface - in other words, it responds to touch with movement. [image borrowed from NewScientist article]
Yohanan and others believe that haptics are a faster route to creating an emotional response … I wonder if the guys at Ai Robotics have included haptics in their soon-to-be-launched “Perfect Woman” robots?
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Paul Raven @ 22-10-2007
While we’re still a way off from being able to meaningfully extend the functional capabilities of the human body through elective surgery (at least affordably), there’s still plenty of more cosmetic tweaks available. But the lines between personal decoration and function can be blurred, especially when art comes in to play - like this "haptic tattoo" concept from the digital media art department of Berlin University, which could theoretically allow people with restricted or low-function vision to parse information about a person by touch. Granted, it’s not a use that I can envisage a huge demand for, but the concept is interesting - and as a body-modder of sorts, it’s refreshing for me to see things like sub-dermal implants being taken seriously by academia, as opposed to being castigated as a form of primitivism. [Via Technovelgy]
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