e2001 Your Digital Future - Bangkok Post Special Supplement

A prototype Immersion tactile mouse

PERIPHERALS

Touching the future

Touch is heading to the desktop

Touch is one critical human sense that is headed for your desktop where it might provide tactile feedback as you navigate a web site, allowing people to experience the texture of a product on sale, or simply to add another significant dimension to what we can experience virtually.

There are many artistic as well as industrial applications around a three-dimensional sculpting environment, ranging from industrial design to fashion _ enough to keep venture capitalists and other investors enthusiastic about the little-known science of haptics.

One such company with much experience in this field is SensAble Technologies that markets a FreeForm modelling system that allows designers and sculptors to create 3D models using their sense of touch.

The FreeForm system blends the intuitiveness and expressiveness of physical modelling with the power and productivity of digital modelling and I had a chance to get my hands on the interface at Acer's eLife 2000 conference earlier this year. Acer is an investor in SensAble, as are many others, including IBM Venture Investments.

The interface is a stylus that is attached to a bracket and which extends upwards, and as the cursor is moved on the screen, so the resistance to movement reflects the properties of the substance it is moving through _ so you can cut through clay or a similar modelling product in a similar way to using a sculpting tool.

Customers from industries as disparate as toys, footwear, furniture, digital content creation, and conceptual design are using the FreeForm system to tackle modelling challenges previously beyond the capabilities of computer software, according to SensAble. The results are big improvements in productivity and time-to-market that come without sacrificing high aesthetic standards.

Last December mouse-maker Logitech began shipping the $99 WingMan Force Feedback mouse, one of the first haptics devices designed for everyday computing. This is attached to its own plastic tray and moves only a few inches in any direction and with software from Immersion loaded on a Windows PC, the microprocessor in the mouse sends commands to tiny motors in the mouse to simulate the appropriate physical force in response to on screen events. _ Tony Waltham