This little device is about the size of a webcam, and it perches on top of your computer monitor in much the same way. It’s Disney’s solution to haptic feedback for gestural input. That is to say, wave your hands in the air to control a computer, and this will give you some sense of actually touching the virtual objects.
The thing shoots toroids of air at the user. We thought the best example of how this is used is the soccer ball demo in the video. A game is being played where virtual soccer balls are launched toward the user. The rig shoots out a puff of air to go along with each ball. When you get your hand in the right place you’ll feel the vortex of air and know you’ve made contact with the virtual object.
On the hardware side this is just begging to be recreated in your basement. What we have here is a 3D printed enclosure that has six sides. Five of them have speaker elements that create pressure waves when given an electrical signal. When coordinated they cause a perfect ring vortex (think cigar smoke ring) to shoot out the flexible nozzle which can be aimed thanks to a gimbal setup. Of course the element that makes it interactive is a 3D camera, which could be a Kinect or Leap Motion when built in the home workshop.
[Thanks Moe]
The voice and the animations in the video reminded me of the Aperture Science computer-aided Enrichment Center
This needs to be immediately adapted for pornographic uses.
Virtual. Blowjobs.
That camera, I want! Anyone know the company/make/model/anything about it? Have been looking for something like that for a while (without ripping apart a kinect)
The camera looks to be a PMD CamBoard Nano http://www.pmdtec.com/products_services/reference_design.php
“hit the Chinese market on April 29 2012, at a price of 3,799 yuan ($600)”
kinda pricey
original kinect or
http://www.primesense.com/solutions/sensor/
is way cheaper
the pmd camboard is much smaller
Maybe this? https://www.leapmotion.com/
“Anywhere in space”
Except behind it lol. Neat though, turning a vortex gun as a user interface
I can’t find that article, but I’ve read about it like 5 years ago.
There was a working model of a system that used a matrix of ultrasonic (maybe piezoelectric) transmitters. When the system wanted the user to feel an object somewhere, it just sent out waves that were focused on that particular spot on his hand (a bit similar technique modern fighters use in synthetic aperture radars).
In the demo a guy was feeling raindrops and other objects.
I think that was a much better technology, because it already had multiple pixels, and was capable forming various waves (not just a single vortex at a time).
Finally, I found it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3seTlvQtIgc
Disney is doing a lot of cool things, also check out this video:
“Computational Design of Mechanical Characters”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfznnKUwywQ
They use a program to calculate gear linkages based on the final movement of mechanical characters. Probably allowing them to just ‘print’ the gears and prototype all the characters!
That’s cool as all hell. It reminds me of stuff the Greeks (supposedly) did with clockwork and hydraulics.