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Science Technology

Intelligent Scalpels Through Touch Technology 87

Posted by michael from the fumbling-toward-ecstasy dept.
DullTrev writes: "The BBC News site is running a story about touch technology. Basically, haptics is the science of incorporating a sense of touch into technology. Scientists at the University of Tokyo have developed a sensor which can feel. So you could have a surgeon operating with a scalpel incorporating this technology, the scalpel could push back against the surgeon when he tries to slice and dice an artery. I'm sure there could be loads of applications for this technology - most uselessly the test these scientists have been doing - stopping cutting a hardboiled egg when you get to the yolk..."
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Intelligent Scalpels Through Touch Technology

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  • This will probably be a great leap for telemedicine. Once it's proven that it can be done, what then?

    Nobody's explained how this will improve medicine to have a surgeon hundreds of miles away. Why not have them right there?

    • Re:Telemedicine (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ami Ganguli ( 921 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @09:06AM (#2568369) Homepage

      It's not just for telemedicine. The idea is to give enhanced feedback, superior to what you would get with just touch. This would allow a surgeon cut exactly what's intended, even if visual or tactile feedback isn't enough to distinguish between different types of tissue.

    • Re:Telemedicine (Score:5, Insightful)

      by onion2k ( 203094 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @09:07AM (#2568376) Homepage
      Because, simply, it would mean a surgeon wouldn't have to travel the world to operate on different people. He/She could work on someone in Paris, and then a few hours later do another operation on someone in Sydney, and then another on someone in Los Angles. Qualified surgeons are a rare bunch and the more people who have access to their skills the better..

      Also, sometimes surgeons can't be there. How about operating in a war zone. Or on an astronaut in space..

      • Ok for the space argument, but for the rest, would you agree to have a surgeon so far from you when he's working on your only body ?
        If it was the only way you had to survive, ok, but work on someone in Paris rather than to go there only because it's easier for him, I'm not sure ..
        ( Having the choice, would you agree ? )

      • Re:Telemedicine (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Lostman ( 172654 )
        Something I have been wondering for a while...

        how would they go about doing this? They would have to use some kind of telecommunications equipment so transmission of data/pictures/etc could be available to the doctor in REAL TIME.

        AFAIK, any kind of connection between countries will not be instant nor semi-instant. Can you imagine the problems associated with lag or a "disconnection" while in the midst of dangerous surgery?

        It is a very interesting concept, but one that should not even be explored until we have the capabilities to give realtime data transmission and to guarentee that random/arbitrary disconnects just dont occur. Doesnt matter how bad your local doctor is if the perfect "virtual" doctor might just disappear on you as he is cutting into a heart...

        • Re:Telemedicine (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Gaccm ( 80209 )
          It is a very interesting concept, but one that should not even be explored until we have the capabilities to give realtime data transmission and to guarentee that random/arbitrary disconnects just dont occur.

          We basicly do, Iternet2. there are FAR less users than on the regular internet, everyone has a minimum of 150K/s? (can't remember) and i seriously doubt anyone would get random disconections.
          • "Seriously doubt" is not good enough. You need virtual certainty that the link will stay up.

            Unless you've developed a perfect router, there definitely is potential for temporary connection loss or degradation. Which is bad.

            Also, I suspect Internet2 will come to have significantly more users as time goes on.
          • Last week in Paris.

            Surgeon in LA / Guy in Paris.

            They used a LS in Fiber with a DIRECT CONNECTION.
            So only repeaters.

            Lag time is under 50ms.

            So with the haptic interface is better, but today LAG time is not the proble. You only need one hell of a link, but those exist for some very rich people 8)
        • Attending one of the Universities connected and researching the Interent 2, I can safely say I have heard a lot about it. Achieving the kinds of bandwith and latency required for such things as remote surgery is exactly the goals of the researchers putting their time into this project.

          Not only that, but there are other opportunities in "remote" surgery that this technology opens up. What if the specialist could see the surgery and communicate to a general surgeon on the patient's end. If the general surgeon used this haptic scalpel, it could not only enable him to better work in areas of the body he is not as familiar with, but the remote specialist would also recieve a lot more data to diagnose the problem and give the general surgeon instructions. If there are bumps on a heart that the general surgeon doesn't know should or should not be there, a haptic sensor connected to a 3D input device could allow the general surgeon to produce an image map showing the bumps, and the remote specialist could get a 3D image or even better, which could be fed back into another haptic device, allowing the specialist to feel the heart without even putting his hands in the patient's chest.
        • So does this mean all our future telepresent medical aces will also be counterstrike frag-meisters?

          Given they have to deal with lag they would have a natural advantage over the non-online-gamers...

          "Nurse I'm going to aim marginally ahead of the organ with the scalpel this time because i have a feeling in my gut that there is some lag coming down the line."

          {buzz - disconnect}

          {sound of much hitting of redial}

          "Doctor... hes... dead!"

          "Oh well he must have been a low-ping-b*st*rd... that'll teach him for using a cheap winmodem!"

    • Re:Telemedicine (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bhima ( 46039 )
      Obviously you've never considered Australia (or any other sparsely populated area)

    • Re:Telemedicine (Score:2, Interesting)

      by TilRock ( 196653 )
      One application I could think of would be space travel. If you have a couple guys on a space station a few hundred miles above the earth and one needs an emergency medical procedure this could really come in handy. I don't know if this would work out for someone on a deep space mission though as the latency might be too great.

      Another application could be a cruise ship, battle ship, or submarine. Could have an expert perform an emergency procedure remotely without having to disrupt the ship operations, or having to airlift the patient.

      If this could be made portable, it could also prove useful on the battlefield if you have a wounded soldier in need of a life-saving specialist.
    • Nobody's explained how this will improve medicine to have a surgeon hundreds of miles away. Why not have them right there?

      It's 'cuz specialists are uh...special (rare).

      Consider an environment like Canada's North (heck - even southern Canada these days). It's fairly common to have a small but isolated community with a decent but small hospital and a couple of competent but not hot-shot general surgeons. A fat pipe connecting a local operating room to a specialist a thousand miles away (for at least remote observation - I'm not convinced about remote manipulation yet) would benefit all involved, and improve the level of treatment without the cost and stress of transporting the patient to a larger population centre for treatment.

      As an added bonus - I believe (no cites handy) that there have been studies showing patient recovery is much better in familiar surroundings, close to home and family.

      Of course, for the really serious stuff you'd have to ship your patients to a large centre for treatment, but a system like this could redefine what's considered "serious stuff"

  • Hmm... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Meefan ( 526525 )
    According to the article, it tells the boundary between the objects via the varying conductivities. Interesting. Now, unless I'm mistaken - it's been a long time since I've had any electronics education - you can't measure conductance without applying voltage, yes? If so, this seems like it may not be the most healthful thing possible. Granted, we're probably not talking about much voltage, but electricity and people are just not a good combination. We get enough fried enough because of sitting in front of monitors all day - this isn't gonna help.
    • "If so, this seems like it may not be the most healthful thing possible. Granted, we're probably not talking about much voltage, but electricity and people are just not a good combination."
      Huh? We are exposed to eletricity everyday, in the form of static electricity. Our bodies generate electrical fields, and pick them up from the enviroment. Our bodies are designed to transmit small electrical impulses without any ill effects. Ever been shocked in the winter after walking through a carpeted hallway? That shock is hundreds of times stronger then anything this would cause.
      • External shocks we can tolerance. But the body doesn't tolerate shocks directly to internal organs. A friend of mine used to work in medical electronics, and he said the limit on power supplies in medical monitoring equipment was something ridiculously low, like 2V.

        Grab.
        • Something like this would operate in the millivolt range or possibly even microvolt. When you are measuring differences in conductivity with advanced sensors you don't need much in the way of current or voltage.

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Scurf ( 443884 )
      I share a certain concern for the human in the modern environment. I would, however, like to mention that your every heartbeat starts with a small electric pulse.

      Besides, as mentioned, every time you move, you generate the stuff in bundles.
    • This is ridiculous. You can measure the conductance by applying very small voltages -- we're talking trivially small, on the order of, say 0.1 V or less (even less if your instrumentation is more sensitive). This isn't going to cause any giant showers of sparks: you wouldn't even notice this being applied to your skin.

      Here's an experiment: go hold two leads attached to an ohmmeter (or multimeter set to resistance, same thing). Notice you have a resistance probably on the order of 10 MOhms; you won't feel a thing even though, as you said, voltage is being applied.

      Now hold the + and - ends of a normal, 1.5 volt battery. Feel anything? Nope.

      Try a 9 volt. Still not feeling anything.

      Hmm...maybe this whole thing was just alarmism.

      --Sam L-L
      • How about sticking a 9V battery on your tongue? Still claiming you can't feel anything?

        Besides, it's not the voltage that counts, its the product of voltage and current.
    • I use electricity in surgery (nearly) every day. It is called an electrocautery knife. The standard one used is monopolar with a large grounding pad stuck on some large area of skin (usually leg or buttocks). It is great for all kinds of cutting, dissection, and cauterization of bleeding vessels.
      The major problem with monopolar cautery is heat transfer, so we don't use it near motor and large sensory nerves. (The small skin branches don't clinically matter).
      There is also various bipolar cauteries as well. They are usually variations of forceps.
      As far as other electrical gizmos, I use nerve stimulators to trace out nerves I am trying to preserve. The only thing is that you will fatigue them if you stimulate them too many times.

      Anyway, I use alot of electricity while operating.
  • ..that surgeons make enough mistakes that something like this is perceived as necessary.
  • I wanna reach out and feel someone.
  • ...to C.M. Kornbluth's "Little Black Bag [nyu.edu]" all the time.

    His basic premise was prophetic [fanac.org] as well. Maybe I should go back and read him again.
  • There is probably a lot of uses for this touch technology in the sex toys industry. The could make certain toys apply the right amounts of pressure to the right places.

  • What does the FDA have to say about this? (Score:3, Informative)

    by reachinmark ( 536719 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @09:11AM (#2568390) Homepage
    The biggest hurdle for haptics in surgery in the past has been getting FDA approval. Most US companies researching in this field typically go to the EU for their trials where people aren't so concerned about the idea of a robot interfering with surgery. I agree with the FDA -- i'd rather trust a trained doctor to not cut my artery than a software program written by a fellow compsci grad!

    Our company works with haptics in surgical *training*, and I must say that this is both more effective and involves fewer regulation issues. Using haptics to simulate a surgical procedure means that surgeons can train to be better - and then they don't need a computer to stop them from killing me. Heck, it even saves pigs.

  • How could it be useless to test out something like that? I'm sure something like that would come in incredbily handy when it comes to most types of organ surgery. It'd allow you to only cut at a certain depth through tissue so you could avoid doing any serious damage if anything goes wrong. Whats so useless about that?

  • Useless Tests??? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lostman ( 172654 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @09:12AM (#2568397)
    most uselessly the test these scientists have been doing

    Useless tests?

    This is an experimental new tool. The scientists are predicting it can be used to detect (say) the membrane surrounding blood vessels, yet these tests are useless?

    It would be both foolish and ignorant to test out an EXPERIMENTAL tool that actually MOVES in a surgical life/death environment. What then could be used to test out its detection of slight changes in membrane? Hello? The layer surrounding the yolk would be similiar to the same one you would see in a vessel...

    Difference? If the tool screws up with the egg, then you can have scrambled eggs... the result in a person isnt even half as good.

  • I sure hope they get VERY good programmers. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @09:12AM (#2568398) Journal
    The surgeon is being trained to keep cutting until the knife warns him that the tissue he's about to cut is important.

    So if the knife DOESN'T warn him - even for a couple miliseconds, he cuts right through arteries or nerves.

    The potential for trouble is enormous.

    And unlike VR built from MRI imaging, there's no indication that a failure is in progress until the damage is done.

    I sure hope the authors of any software involved, and the designers of any hardware, are VERY good at building a VERY robust product.

    I remember a certain radiation therapy machine, which operated in two modes - one with an attenuation shield, one without it. If you typed too fast on the touch-panel control, it would go through the whole cycle normally, but with the shield OUT rather than IN. Killed several patients before they figured out what was happening.

    I hear they had done a marvelous faiure analysis on the hardware. But they had assumed the software would be perfect.
    • I doubt that any skilled surgeon would want a scalpel that moves in his hand, even slightly - one of the things that makes a good surgeon is an incredible precision and delicacy of touch, and having a tool that twitches in your hands would be the surgical equivilent of that damn paperclip. It might work for telepresence, but not to second guess the surgeon - instead, it should attempt to simulate actual cutting so that a surgeons already-trained reflexes can be used.
      • Most forms intraoperative monitoring I am farmiliar with (evoked potentials and blood flow measurements) use auditory cues to let the surgeon know when he is being too rough with the tissue. Auditory cues would seem to be the best mode of feedback for surgeons since their vision, touch and smell (think bowel surgery or electrocautery) are likely to be fully occupied.

        That is unless you can rig something up to let the surgeon taste the tissue under his scalpel.

        Lets all say it together now...EWwwwwww
      • Not so much twitching, as blocking the surgeon from cutting where he shouldn't. Brain surgery, maybe?

        More useful may be where there's differences of scale - for example, keyhole surgery using those natty little gadgets on the end of a fibre-optic stalk that go up a vein. Or say the surgeon needs to clear out a blood clot from an artery. Then the gadget can be programmed so that it will cut the blood clot, but won't allow anything to touch the artery wall itself.

        Another advantage might be that you won't need super-genius surgeons to do some of this stuff. With built-in checks, maybe a normal doctor or a less-skilled surgeon could do the job. And for training ppl up, this would be ideal - no more accidents by junior doctors, for example.

        Grab.
        • This comment really cracks me up.

          When I was an intern surgeon, we always laughed that the big secret of neurosurgery, was that it didn't take a neurosurgeon to do it. ;)

          As far as your comments about surgeon skill, it currently takes a minimum of five years of training after medical school to do this stuff. A knife that told me what to do would end up stuck in the wall, or in the product representative. But I don't want anything jumping around in my hand while dissecting something important.

          Believe me, you would rather have an experienced surgeon inside you than a machine. It could be really cool for traing purposes though.
    • You are referring to the Therac 25. (http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Th erac_1.html)

      The problem was that they assumed that safety features in the software would be good enough, and thus didn't have the mechanical safety interlocks that earlier versions of the machine had.

      When the operator was using the machine, they would fill out a screen of info, and press a button to initiate the treatment. Sometimes, however, things would inexplicably go awry and the patients would receive many times the expected dose.

      It was very difficult to reproduce the bug. It turns out that you needed someone very familiar with the interface to reproduce it. The system worked by scanning the values of the input screen occasionally. The bug only manifested itself if you could fill out the screen, tab back a few entries, correct something, and initiate treatment all before a sweep could pick up your initial input. Only operators with nimble fingers who did that ten times a day were quick enough.

      The morale of the story is that you shouldn't depend completely on software to save the day. Use everything at your disposal when life is at stake, including mechanical safety measures.

  • For more info (Score:2, Informative)

    by SaturnTim ( 445813 )

    Millersville University has been working on related technologies.

    http://cs.millersv.edu

    (too lazy to html in the morning).

    --T

  • Eggs aren't useless... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Igirisu ( 197598 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @09:21AM (#2568447) Journal
    IIRC, surgeons practice on eggs because they have the same sort of 'feel' as human internals do.

    ...Or am I thinking of oranges? They have the same properties as human skin, ISTR.

    Anyway - would you rather they test this out on real living tissue (e.g. your heart) or on something which is already dead and gives a similar consistency/texture/feel?

    I know which I'd rather they try first.

    --
    Igirisu

    • Re:Eggs aren't useless... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by hanwen ( 8589 )
      Anyway - would you rather they test this out on real living tissue (e.g. your heart) or on something which is already dead and gives a similar consistency/texture/feel?

      I know which I'd rather they try first.

      Experimental surgical tools and procedures generally are tested on cadavers and animals first. When designing medical technology, measurable benefits for patient (reduced fatality rates, improved recovery time, etc.) always is the benchmark.

      The ethical and financial stakes in this business are too high to take unresponsible risks. What does the assorted slashdot crowd think? This is not technology of "hey that looks neat, let's try to see if this hack doesn't crash" type.

  • Since professional brain surgery is rapidly FTL'ing light-years beyond the clumsy incompetence of mere human surgeons, robot neurosurgeons may soon be able to adapt and adopt this exciting new haptic scalpel technology for the next time one of us Transhumanists needs a minor cranial excavation and rearrangement of our precious neural tissue. The Sensorium Module [sourceforge.net] of the Artificial Mind for Cyborgs [scn.org] may make use of the haptic scalpels in the appendages if not hands of robot doctors.

    At the risk of seeming to tie in any and all bionics-related Slashdot articles with the 'shrooming Public Domain Artificial Intelligence Project [sourceforge.net], let a few independent AI Mind URLs now be adduced to stifle the nattering and snickering of Slashdot anklebiters who don't realize that there's a Technological Singularity [caltech.edu] going on.

    The first Mind implementation is in MSIE JavaScript at http://mind.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] -- an online AI.

    A previous attempt at porting Mind.Forth to Visual Basic was http://www.virtualentity.com/mind/vb/ [virtualentity.com] -- Mind.VB (3.Apr.2000).

    A more recent port from JavaScript into Mind.JAVA is at http://www.angelfire.com/nf/vision/ai/mjava.html [angelfire.com]-- (June 2001).

    All these artificial Minds blossoming and proliferating across the 'Net may matriculate at various medical schools, earn a Medicinae Doctor degree, and assist or solo at your next brain surgery with the new intelligent scalpel technology. Now, any comments from anonymous cowards ankle-biting at the footsteps of AI progress?

  • Useless tests (Score:2, Interesting)

    by smaughster ( 227985 )
    Such technology already is in use to harvest tomatoes. A robot arm can slightly squeeze them and determine the ripeness of a tomato based on the firmness of the tomato. If not ripe, then the tomato is left alone to get some more sun. It's systems like this which can be used to automate farms.

  • Sword fighting and medieval mayhem?! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Aside from serious apps, I wonder if this could be used for recreational weapons and stage props. A sword that cuts everything but human skin would be peachy keen.

    Imagine.. you and your geeky Renaissance friends could suit up and smash away with realistic swords and minimal armor- no more dorky duct tape swords, W00t!
    • I know this is a joke, but dont they already have saw that only cuts casts off people but wont cut the skin? Wonder how that works...

      • They use an oscillating or vibrating saw (also for amputations and autopsies (probably not the same saw)).

        The idea is that the saw-blades move a short distance back and forth. The skin or flesh is flexible for the short distance that the blade oscillates, so isn't cut. Bone however is not flexible so the teeth cut into the bone.

        I was trying to find a good reference using Google, but made the mistake of looking at some of the pictures on the medical sites...

  • Future of haptics? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Man of E ( 531031 ) <i.have@no.email.com> on Thursday November 15, 2001 @09:48AM (#2568556)
    some experts predict that haptics will soon be as familiar a part of the computer desktop as colour graphics and stereo sound are today.

    Meaning everyone will have two little needles in a box on their desktop, which they can use to feel the texture of a website? My guess is that successfully bringing haptics to the desktop and making them part of everyday usage will not happen "soon", but will take a great deal more development until the same quality of tactile feedback can be translated to, say, a VR glove, and linked to visuals. Even then, in its initial stages, I see few applications beyond some games and pr0n.

    • Well, there is a lot of haptics experimentation going on in the graphics field right now. A company came by my school a few weeks ago and were showing off this pen that can be used to sculpt a 3d piece of clay using haptic feedback. It could revolutionalize the 3d modelling industry.
    • is just the same as any other sense technology. recorded sound gave us the ability to reproduce sound far away in time and space from it's origin. when touch is on an equal footing to this, it will be so commonplace, you won't think of it any more than a photograph, or tape recording.


  • Hasn't it occured to anyone that if a doctor is so error-prone, constantly nicking arteries of his patients, that he shouldn't be practicing surgery in the first place?

    Just what the doctor ordered.. An electric steak-knife. Sorry, gang, but if a surgeon cant handle a scalpel with any degree of competence, you need to find a new surgeon, not a new scalpel.

    Cheers,
    • Yes, and if you need to wear eyeglasses to code, you shouldn't be a programmer.

      (see how many /. readers agree with that)
    • To be fair, it is not always easy to avoid arteries and veins. Sometimes they are encased in tumor, other times they are not where they should be.

      I am skeptical of any tool that promises greater ease of use for non- or sub-trained people. Despite what some people think, surgery is *not* cookbook. If it were Dan Ackroyd would have been much more successful in "Spies like Us"

      The trick of training surgeons is in the development of judgment on who and who not to operate.

      Did that go offtopic?
  • what about end user support when this thing blue screens. Talk about a general exception fault ruining your day.

  • Its beyond experimentation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Alomex ( 148003 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @10:18AM (#2568760) Homepage
    I attended a presentation by a French team three years ago, in which they had actually used feedback scalpels in the operating room.

    The doctor usually stops cutting well before any feedback is felt, but sometimes it goes near the feedback and overrides it, because his visual inspection is better than the PET scan used to determine feedback levels. The feedback is simply a way to tell a doctor "stop, are you sure about what you are doing?".

    They also had samples of robots sawing bones, opening crania and doing, get this, prostate inspections. By the end of the presentation all the males in the room had placed our hands instinctively covering that sensitive area.
  • Come on those of you who think the onlu use of this is for porn. It looks like a great enabler for those with resricted or total loss of vision. Wouldn't it be great to be able to feel the data in your spreadsheet or feel how your network is performing. However I can't be sure from the article if the breakthrough is the sensor technology or the bio feedback mechinism. slashnik
  • I'm really skeptical about the possibility of really effective tele-surgery. I'm not a surgeon, I'm an architect. I have a fair amount of experience building models, and I can't imagine building even a so-so cardboard and balsa model with telemedicine equipment. You would think that it's easier to cut and assemble cardboard than to suture an artery. Haptics are critical in getting there, but even in basic modelbuilding there's an astounding amount of very subtle feedback and knife control involved. I have to say, though, that the 'stop and the yolk' work makes a lot of sense as a test for this system.
  • I want sensors like this for my shoes, so when I'm carrying groceries into the house and the cat comes up to greet me the shoes'll throb when the cat's in front (or behind) them.

    Or better yet, sensors in my the seat of my pants so I can tell when people are checking out my butt...

  • It'd be interesting to see this technology applied to the war industry.
  • I swear this came up already in the discussions about SIGGRAPH 2001. The Researchers who came up with this were showing it off. In response to the earlyy post about electrical currents and such, it doesn't have to be an electrical current feedback, it can use any kind of feedback, optical, density, etc. Basically what this device does is it senses the boundary line between two different substances (i.e. water and oil, white of an egg and its yolk...) and gives them a very strong tactile feedback to keep them from pushing through - however one can override the device and still push through.

    I got to try it at SIGGRAPH. As an example they had a small clear tank filled with water and something heavier beneath (dunno what it was...obviously nontoxic though). They handed you a pen to stick into the mixture and try as you like there was no way you could determine where one liquid stopped and the next began simply by touch (the liquids were different colors). Next they let you try with the haptic device. A clear plastic or glass wand the same size as the pen which was connected to a robotic arm. Every time the wand touched the surface of the lower liquid, the robotic arm would kick in and keep you from penetrating it with a fairly strong force that would take some serious concious effort to overcome. Basically the device let you literally feel the line of difference between the liquids, which you would otherwise never be able to dectect by touch. In fact, just to prove how well it worked, they would from time to time bump or stir the tank so that there would be visible ripples in the intersection of the two liquids. The haptic device still worked great at letting you feel the bumps and valleys created. The video/slideshow on the wall behind the display showed the hard boiled egg example among other things. The person wielding the scalpel was able in a single quick cut (less than 20 seconds) cut the white off the yolk without cutting the yolk at all. This could allow doctors to cut through a layer of skin or tissue without cutting what was underneath. It doesn't have to be recalibrated for each and every set of materials used, just the one that it is pentrating. It detects differences in properties (such as conductivity) and won't let you penetrate anything but what you set it to allow you to pentrate.

  • Beyond touch ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by LL ( 20038 )
    ... and biofeedback controllers are now entering commercialisation phase ... take a look at BioForce [tank-ip.com] which was voted the best gaming technology in the LA Electronic Entertainment Expo [news.com.au]. This uses low intensity electric pulses to provide external stimulii ... just the thing for convincing Quake Gods with dellusions of invulnerability to switch to Counterstrike instead :-). This recently won an Entrepreneur Prize [uq.edu.au] with the specific aim of commercialising it so expect to see some shocking developments in the haptics arena in the not so distant future.

    LL

  • There are some commercial companies who have been working in this area for several years.
    Most notably Reachin [reachin.se] and SensAble [sensable.com].

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