Muscular Stimulation for Haptic Modeling

[Xensory]

At SXSW this weekend, Tech Crunch interviewed Olivier Bau, a Disney imageneer about his work:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/10/sxsw-k ... ectricity/

The video starts off discussing electrostatic surface simulation, but then moves on to discussing Japanese research to use electrical stimulation to provide more substantial resistance.

A bit of googling uncovered this article, which might be the research that Baum is referencing:
http://www.matchmove.com/newsarticle/to ... ijack-hand
Project Page: http://lab.rekimoto.org/projects/possessedhand/

It's an fascinating approach, which could be effective as a component of a haptic system. Since resistance would be created via active muscle stimulation, continuous operation would be impractical. However, I could see it used to provide resistance for hands or feet, where the use of an exoskeleton would be more cumbersome. Since the signal to contract can be detected about 100ms before contraction occurs, an active system could detect and predict hand and finger motions and then override the contraction signals as needed to simulate resistance.

[Dantesinferno]

@xensory I honestly was looking at a similar approach with my VR gun and was considering using a small exoskeleton along with gloves to stop a players hands if they virtually run their hand into something. I think electrostatic stimulation would be the best solution however, i'm just scared of the use of electricity directly to the skin. I don't know if there are any serious dangers, maybe there is. maybe there isnt. It would be much easier to use electrostatic stimulation though, rather than having thousands of little vibrators over the body to simulate touching and an exoskeleton to overide body movement.


Edit: And i'm scared of the possibility of the government(Or an organization) controlling people.. You never know what could happen.