Tactile Brush uses sensory illusions to assist you to feel games, movies

Poor arachnophobes — it’s bad enough that 3D movies could make it appear to be swarms of eight-legged freaks are pouring out of the screen, now Disney wants you to feel the creepy crawlies, too. In a presumed effort to 1-up those “4D” chairs used at Shrek’s castle down in Orlando, the corporate was engaged on what it calls Tactile Brush — a chair with an array of 12 vibrating coils which are ready to simulate anything from the feeling of speeding around a race track to the subtle drip of rain to your back. Two techniques are used: apparent motion, which triggers two motors in quick succession to create the illusion of something moving over your skin, and phantom sensation, wherein two stationary vibrations are felt as a single tingle between the 2 points. Disney researchers demoed Tactile Brush on the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Vancouver using a racing game, but hope to bring it to amusement park rides and film theaters — which, within the right hands, should result in more screaming and no less than a number of pairs of wet pants.

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This post is tagged: amusement park, amusement park rides, apparent motion, computing systems, creepy crawlies, eight legged freaks, phantom sensation