Scientists recreate sense of touch on the internet
scientists in Britain and the us recently shook hands. No big deal, one might think, but the men in question were 4,828 kilometres apart, connected only by the internet. In a technological first, two scientists -- one in London and one in Boston -- picked up a computer-generated cube between them and moved it.
This was done with the help of devices called phantoms, which recreate the sense of touch by sending small impulses at very high frequencies via the internet. "The experiment went very well," said Joel Jordan, part of a team of scientists at the uk-based University College London (ucl), who had teamed up with colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, usa. "You can actually feel the object being pushed against your hand," he said. "We could even feel each others hand forces."
They plan to conduct a second experiment across an even greater distance -- London to California. According to ucl researchers, the secret behind the technology is the speed at which the successive impulses are sent. "In much the same way that the brain reinterprets still images into moving pictures, the frequencies received by the phantom are similarly integrated to produce the sense of a continuous sensation." Not only could the researchers feel the force being exerted, they could also feel the texture of the object they were feeling. "You can feel how rough something is, or how springy the side of the cube is," Jordan said.
The implications of the experiment could be vast, claim the researchers. For example, trainee surgeons could use it to practice operations via the internet. It also would have recreational uses, allowing people to touch and feel each other over the internet. "There are certainly strange aspects to this," Jordan said. "You can hit each other hard enough to leave little bruises, and there are bigger versions of the equipment we're using which could really cause some damage." However, commercial application of the technique would take time. "Don't expect to find touchy-feely computer software in the shops soon. I don't think it'll be available to the public for at least five years," Jordan said.
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