Friday, 13 June 2014

With Remote Hand-Holding Tech, We Can Touch Each Other Around the World

You can easily see and hear things on the internet, and of the remaining three senses, the senses of smell and taste seem both far off and not quite necessary. The internet of touch and texture, however, feels much more possible and desirable. And it's on its way.
“In the 19th century you have speech in the distance from the telephone. In the 20th you get sight with a webcam and now its time to invent products who feel at a distance,” Frederic Petrignani, CEO of the Dutch technology firm Holland Haptics, told me over the phone. “Many people are trying to do just that. When we succeed it will be as common as making a telephone call or using your webcam.”
Thus far this desire to bring back touch in the digital age has wrought remote-controlled wearable tech for the body's most sensitive areas—lots of bluetooth-connected vibrating things for the bedroom so your significant other can have the thrill of, well, pushing buttons.
But for all the thrill and giggling surrounding an incredibly named product like Funderwear, there's also a more modest implication of haptic technology, a device that lets you physically hold hands over the internet.
Petrignani is the inventor of the “Frebble." It's designed to be a “silent, portable, affordable” way to enclose someone's hand at a distance.
“Holding hands or social touch is so important to people,” he said. “People use that sense all day; if you allow them to use the sense of touch, they will use it.”
The Frebble is one of the more narrowly designed internet-connected hands; it's just for social touch. You can't pick anything up with it, and sexiness, with just the single displacement actuator, sexiness is pretty much out of the question. Which is why from the beginning it has had a different audience in mind than long-distance lovers.

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