Scientists' iPhone case could electrify mobile gaming
While rumbling gamepads and vibrating steering wheels have been standard equipment since the 1990s, they haven't been able to have quite the same impact on mobile gaming -- power consumption problems see to that -- but a team based in Germany might be about to change all that.
While rumbling gamepads and vibrating steering wheels have been standard equipment since the 1990s, they haven't been able to have quite the same impact on mobile gaming -- power consumption problems see to that -- but a team based in Germany might be about to change all that.
Pedro Lopes and Patrick Baudisch of the Hasso Plattner Institute have come up with a way to use precise, painless electrical stimulation to cause muscle movement as part of a mobile gaming experience.
Four electrodes are attached to players' forearms and, in conjunction with a prototype iOS game, can make players involuntarily tilt their phone, creating a sensation of force feedback.
Players using the system find themselves fighting against involuntary movements in their arms and hands. In Lopes's demonstration video, those movements correspond to on-screen events during a flight game.
But this sort of haptic feedback isn't created by a miniature motor. Instead, it's what Lopes and Baudisch are calling "muscle-propelled force feedback."
The system has been booked in for a demonstration at the CHI 2013 conference in Paris, April 27 - May 2, the same congress that members of Microsoft's Kinect team will be attending.
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