Japanese Build a Virtual Hugging Vest

If your only human contact is through a little computer window in a poorly lit room, your life just got a little sadder thanks to Dzmitry Tsetserukou, an assistant professor at Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan. He has designed a collection of motors, sensors, and speakers, stitched into what looks like the straps of a backpack, called the iFeel_IM. The device can simulate a heart beat, the tickling sensation of a butterflies in your stomach, generate warmth and hug even the most repugnant shut-in. From the article: "The quickened thump of an angry heart beat, a spine-tingling chill of fear, or that warm-all-over sensation sparked by true love -- all can be felt even as your eyes stay glued to a computer screen." This device is not to be confused with the hugging vest created by engineers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for people with anxiety disorders and the autistic.

The real hug secret

[Anonymous Coward]

The breakthrough, of course, were certain undisclosed details of the two expandable bladders on the upper part of the vest. May or may not have added to realism, but "users didn't care".

Fembots

[NonUniqueNickname]

We all know where this is headed. Sooner or later someone in Japan will build an anatomically correct schoolgirl android and pay her to put her panties in a vending machine so he could buy the panties and sniff them alone in his apartment... so alone.

Re:Just MAKE one

[jason.sweet]

but if your partner is out of town

The easiest person in the world to tell a lie is yourself.

Re:Oh my God

[xmousex]

enjoy your skin cancer and communicable diseases

Re:ASD

[Chris Mattern]

Somewhere, a behavioral psychologist is quietly crying...

But only because he was trained to do so whenever a bell rings.

just leave it to the japaneese

[gamecrusader]

just leave it to the japanesee to build electronics which are little strange and pointless