And with this you could probably program the EXACT amount of
enriched environment talked about by Dr. Dale Corbett in 2011,
needed for your sensation recovery and also your sensorimotor recovery.
Enriched Environment Promoted Cognitive Function via Bilateral Synaptic Remodeling After Cerebral Ischemia
Maybe even better than the Szechuan pepper that sends the equivalent of 50 light taps to the brain per second?
This could easily create all the different types of sensation that Margaret Yekutiel wrote a whole book about in 2001, 'Sensory Re-Education of the Hand After Stroke'? Or didn't you know about that book? 19 years and you are THAT FUCKING INCOMPETENT?
VR gets touchy-feely with electronic skin – a game-changer for stroke rehabilitation and prosthetics to gaming and social media
John
Rogers, a professor of bioengineering at Northwestern University in the
United States, says that virtual reality (VR) technology is all very
well. But while it can offer a deeply immersive experience, that
experience is constrained: it is just an audiovisual one. What if
physical sensation could be added to that?
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| Electronic skins offer wearers a deeply immersive experience. Photo: Getty Images |
“Electronic skins” – which add tactile sensation
to virtual reality experiences – have been prototyped before, but using
clunky electrodes and typically offering far from the instantaneous
feedback required to make the touch experience feel as real as the
visual one. But late last year, Rogers unveiled – after a decade of work
– a wireless, battery-free silicon gel smart skin that allows the
real-time recreation of a realistic touch sensation as transmitted from
another device.
Pioneering gloves can offer a virtual touch. Photo: Getty Images
That
could prove a game-changer for, say, stroke rehabilitation or
prosthetics, but also the VR technologies used in gaming, social media
and entertainment, or in prototype design and development. People will
be able to feel a virtual touch in a way that feels authentic. The
sensations felt by one person could be played back on another, or on a
crowd of people.
It
is certainly a step on from the myriad (and often blurred) spins on VR
that also have made developmental advances in recent years – most
notably the likes of augmented reality (AR), in which a real-world
environment is enhanced by computer-generated information, and MR, or
mixed reality, which merges physical and digital objects in real time.
To date, MR has been used by golf spectators, in the teaching of anatomy
and in the creation of lifelike holographic “people”.
“The
idea [for the smart skin] originally had medical uses in mind, but
obviously the tech is applicable to VR,” says Rogers, who is now working
on a thinner, lighter version of his electronic skin, with a greater
wireless range, too. Inevitably, this has received interest from VR
developers. “That’s a space we’re planning to work in ourselves now.
Skin sensation is the only mode of physical interaction with our
environment, and when you think of human interaction, nothing is more
intimate or communicative. So there’s a compelling need to bring that to
VR.”
Virtual
reality haptics – as the field of bringing touch to VR is called –
already offers a less realistic form of touch sensation than the kind
Rogers’ smart skin promises. Start-ups such as Plexus, Kaaya Tech, Exiii
and HaptX have developed the likes of gloves, and even full-body motion
capture suits, wearable computer interfaces that provide haptic
feedback – through subtle vibrations – to their wearers. Or, as the
marketing for Teslasuit puts it, the ability “to simulate experience and
accelerate mastery in the physical world”.
How
do these devices typically work? They house many actuators – which
convert a signal into mechanical motion – that deliver variable
frequencies, patterns and intensities to reflect certain stimuli;
whether, for instance, the virtual environment is hot or cold, wet or
dry, rough or smooth. There are limits, though: while Rogers is working
on actuators that could mimic a twisting and other distinct physical
sensations, he points out that recreating force – say, the sensation of
being punched – will require a different, for the moment unclear,
approach.
VR haptics are likely to be a game-changer in the world of training. Photo: Getty Images
According
to Alexander Padhaiski, partner in VR consultancy The Parallel, which
has worked with Teslasuit, VR haptics are likely to find their initial
primary role in training: VR training has been shown to lead to much
greater retention than classroom-based training, and even leads to the
building of muscle memory. Trainers are a limited and expensive
resource, too – but their input can be embedded in a simulation to allow
users to train alone. Such an advance could be especially valuable in
high-stakes industries in which errors cost millions, or maybe lives;
but could equally just as well be used to, for example, train people in
certain sports.
“The
tech is still very much in its infancy, but making VR haptic is really a
no-brainer,” says Padhaiski, whose VR projects have included one with
London-based Chinese artist Jacky Tsai. “VR has had problems – causing
dizziness, for example – because of the differences between what the
brain is processing visually and what the body feels. We need to be able
to express in the body what a VR user sees in their headset. That will
allow us to be able to simulate scenarios much more accurately.”
Haptic
VR is likely to also see the advent of “virtual products”. At the
moment, VR temporarily replaces the physical with the virtual to some or
other end; but, as Exiii has proposed, the future could bring, for
example, a virtual piano that only exists in virtual space but that
actually feels like a physical piano when played. Digital objects could
appear nearly the same as physical ones.
Much
as digital cameras replaced film cameras because they offered new and
distinct advantages, so virtual objects would, relative to physical
ones, save on space and transport costs, be endlessly upgradeable and
offer insights through data capture, too.
Just
how quickly this all comes is, of course, another matter. As Padhaiski
points out, the adoption rate for VR technologies to date has been
considerably slower than people imagine; slower, too, than the industry
expected.
For
businesses to use VR is certainly challenging – and many have taken it
on superficially, so to appear cutting-edge rather than actually be so.
“But there’s no question that, especially with developments like
haptics, the potential for VR is huge,” he says. “And the coming decade
will see real change in its use.”
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