The folks over at Disney Research have just developed a haptic jacket to produce physical sensations within an immersive experience. On a side not this is kind of strange since Disney has recently closed their Carnegie-Mellon research lab but the video claims to originate from the lab. I hope the research lives on past the CMU lab. The Void, which is also now a Disney property, has already invented and has been employing a haptic rumble jacket participants put on when going through the Star Wars or Ghostbusters experiences.
Different from the Void jacket, the Disney jacket is laced with an array of “Force units”> Each unit is a small pouch that can either vibrate or expand with air. The intensity of the vibration and the air expansion is controllable within the experience. These are all of the details I have for now. This is a cool interface device but I am curious about the air compression needed for each force unit. I understand this is just a prototype. However, the complications of moving air will almost this this to be an exclusive location-based device. This is fine for location based experiences but outside of VR porn enthusiasts, I don’t see how this could ever be targeted for home usage.
