Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) scientists looking for ways to transmit the sense of touch over the Internet have devised a vibration jacket for chickens and are thinking about electronic children’s pyjamas for cyberspace hugs.
A wireless jacket for chickens or other pets can be controlled with a computer and gives the animal the feeling of being touched by its owner. The next step would be to use the same concept to transmit hugs over the Internet.
“These days, parents go on a lot of business trips, but with children, hugging and touching are very important,” explained NTU Associate Professor Adrian David Cheok.
NTU is thinking of a pyjama suit for children, which would use the Internet to adjust changes in pressure and temperature to simulate the feeling of being hugged. Parents wearing a similar suit could be “hugged” back by their children.
The Straits Times.
TAGS: chickens, hugs, jacket, pets, pyjamas, singapore, touch
posted by : regine on 28 Nov 2005
During a graduate design certificate taught by Joanna Berzowska, experientiae electricae wanted to create a poetical content accessible daily using new technologies that more than often are considered for functional or commercial uses.
Garment is an excellent support for a daily interaction, and the use of soft technologies let us fully integrate a variety of caption systems and their response via sound, lighting, or colour changing, a first prototype: One’s Walk, uses those principles.
This costume emphasises walking rhythm as a basis for daydreaming or meditation. One’s walk captures the path rhythm of it’s user and sends it back as a synchronised sound diffused in the collar of the jacket. By retransmitting the sound of his own walk, one takes a distance from urban noise and stays in an environment proper for meditation that in many ways resembles the one romantics imagined in full nature by the romantics for le flaneur, and by all hikers carrying out a ritual walk along the world’s paths.
The integration of electronics is done either directly within the fabric with conductive yarns or included in accessories (buttons, decorative elements) for solid parts washable as any costume the only solid part: the electronic embedded in the collar is detachable, this was the primary condition for the project.
TAGS: collar, jacket, sound, urban, walk
posted by : regine on 19 Nov 2005
