Tactile feedback is nothing new. It’s been used in telecommunications and in entertainment for decades, and it became a standard feature in the late 1990s in mobile phones and video games – where vibrations alert you to new messages or help you “feel” the forces exerted on your avatar. Haptic technology has been very much a bit player in the fields that it’s infiltrated, though, and only now are we seeing it begin to take its place alongside visual and audio tech as a key element in human-computer interaction.
Smartwatches such as the upcoming Apple Watch are embracing haptics to give you turn-by-turn directions. Researchers, meanwhile, are experimenting with haptic cues built into the steering wheel of cars for enhanced safety, and with tactile feedback built into touchscreens and public maps for more natural-feeling interactions.
Haptics enable deafblind people to browse the web (thanks to Morse Code) or even to play video games. In the gaming space, haptics is a fast-growing field thanks to the rise of virtual reality and the desire of players to feel just as viscerally as they see and hear their virtual environments. Haptic technology is also helping to train the next generation of surgeons, and improving simulations in the industrial sector for pilots and large machine operators.
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