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Midas' touch

The Week - “Innovation that transmits tactile sensation over the
Net could find use in healthcare and education”

Some time during mid-June this year, in the Virtual Reality Lab of the University of Buffalo, New York, a professor and his student sitting at two different computer terminals 'touched' each other over the Net. The duo had been struggling for the past six months trying to develop a technology where the person at one end could actively follow the finger of the person at the other. With the invention, the professor Dr Thenkurussi Kesavadas and the student-Dhananjay Shripad Joshi-have added an important dimension to communication of the sense of touch.

• Haptics is the science of integrating the sense of touch into human-computer interactions.
• Imagine there are two users A (transmitter) and B (receiver) sitting at two computer terminals.
• A holds an object. The data glove he wears captures the pressure he applies as he uses it.
• A's tactile experience is transmitted over the Net to B, who receives the data using a sensing tool. B is now able to feel the hardness or softness of the object the same way as A feels.
• The screen shows the orientation of A's hand so that B can mimic that orientation for a total experience.
  

Great work. Congratulations!

Very interesting technology. The current cost is around $15k-$20k. More than endorsement by medical community, I believe the best chance for this to get affordable is in the following businesses.

• Quality assurance of silk: this is a big business that spends quite a lot of money on transporting highly-paid “silk experts” to corners of the world. One would imagine you could ship silk samples instead, but this technology will make silk experts telecommute.
• Porn sites: you can judge for yourself, how many different ways this technology can be used in this industry My feeling is that these guys might even be early adopters.
• Instant Messenger.

Side note: Thenkurussi is a village next to my native village - about 2kms. Feeling good

1. Its just amazing!!!!. I am Divakar, residing at Puthur, Palakkad district and presently working as Internal Auditor in Muscat. I am very proud to say I that Mr. keshu is my neighbour and I know him very well. He proved the brilliance and capability of INDIANS to the world without any doubt. His "Tharavaadu" is Thenkurissi and it is more famous to the world because of his contribution. Big congratulations to him and may God bless him and his family with health, wealth and happiness to contribute more inventions to the world.

   Posted by: Divakar on October 17, 2003 01:22 AM