How Virtual Reality Can Tech You to Fly - Inspired by MTBS3D

[benz145]

Over in the Oculus Rift forum, MTBS3D member Namielus posted an interesting video about using thought to control a 'Parrot AR Drone' quadcopter. This connected a number of disparate things that I've seen in the past including something called 'perceptual illusion' and FPF (first person flying). I'm quite convinced that combining the aforementioned with virtual reality can lead to the sensation of unassisted human flight -- something I think it's safe to say that most humans have dreamed about at some point in their life. If you're interested as to how this would work, please take a look and let me know what you think! I'm willing to be some of the folks here have the technology on hand to even do this themselves.

http://www.roadtovr.com/2012/09/11/how- ... o-fly-1172

[Namielus]

Cool, thats a really interesting article. And that bird with the oculus rift was too funny.
Must be incredibly immersive once you have used touch and visual input to induce a sense of self in whatever you are controlling.
Be it game or remote control vehicle.

I have not read a lot about tactile suits that can "touch" you without the manual assistance of a human.
But this got me more interested.

[brantlew]

Nice idea. And all seemingly achievable with foreseeable tech.

[benz145]

Cool, thats a really interesting article. And that bird with the oculus rift was too funny.
Must be incredibly immersive once you have used touch and visual input to induce a sense of self in whatever you are controlling.
Be it game or remote control vehicle.

I have not read a lot about tactile suits that can "touch" you without the manual assistance of a human.
But this got me more interested.

I also haven't seen any research on this yet but I think it's out there. I really don't think it would be very hard. Imagine a simple grid that wraps around your leg. The grid has squares that are one square inch, at the corner of each square is a small variable vibrator. Now take a matching grid of sensors and wrap it around a fake leg. When someone touches the sensors, the corresponding vibrators on your lake shake. With sensitive sensors and good highly dynamic vibrators, everything from a subtle brush to a slap could be simulated. It wouldn't be the exact same sensation that you would feel if it were really your leg being touch, but I have a very strong feeling that the brain would readily make the connection with enough practice. The brain would map the feeling so that the fake leg would achieve a sense of self. Now imagine wrapping the sensing grid around an inanimate object like a baseball bat. Even though this is not analogous to any part of the human body, enough training and repetition should allow the brain to map to the object and consider it 'self'. When someone gripped the handle, you'd know they were gripping the handle because of the mapping of the sensation on the leg to your brain -- even from another room you'd know what part of the bat was being touch, it would be 'you'.

I really want to do some experiments now. Anyone have the expertise to build the tech?

[PalmerTech]

It has been done by multiple companies, but it is all locked up in patent-land.

[benz145]

It has been done by multiple companies, but it is all locked up in patent-land.

Do you know of any studies or solid info on this?

[PalmerTech]

Look into Disney Haptics, they have the most impressive I have seen.

[EdZ]

Anyone have the expertise to build the tech?

I don't know of any technologies that can directly stimulate targeted sensory nerves in the skin, with the exception of simply sending a large shock through to stimulate nociceptors (pain). There is, to my knowledge, no way to generate phantom heat or cold, or phantom touch. The closest is using low-current TENS for general area pain relief (essentially inducing temporary paralysis in an area of receptors).
Contact sensors, essentially actuated pin-grids, are in use in interface devices for the blind as braille displays. However these have a small output area, aren't flexible (i.e. you couldn't wrap one around your hand), and are fairly bulky due to being large arrays of electromechanical actuators.
However, there are also non-contact non-mechanical touch-generators using ultrasound. Googling 'ultrasound haptics' should find some similar projects. It doesn't stimulate touch directly, but rather creates actual touch sensations using a phased array of ultrasonic transducers to generate arbitrary pressures in a volume above the array.

[FingerFlinger]

The phased-array ultrasonic stuff is very neat, but it's hard to imagine how it could incorporated into wearable equipment for walk around VR. I can see it being very cool in a CAVE or flight simulator setup, though.