Professor David Howard of the University of York is leading a project, "Towards Real Virtuality," to develop sensory cocoons piping sensory feedback into users' homes from virtual environments. IBM and engineering consultancy Arup are corporate partners alongside scientists from the University of Warwick. The project, currently funded by a £200,000 grant, is aimed at producing two cocoons: one installed in every home "within 15-20 years" and another portable device with output for sights, sounds, and smells.
Howard also sees a potential for the cocoons to be tied to location-based services like Google Earth to then access virtual environments around the world.
"The challenge is, if you can't travel would you be happy meeting someone remotely? Would you be happy having a business meeting? If you couldn't see someone's body language would you agree to a business deal?" Howard asked the Yorkshire Post. "We cannot yet say what the exact nature of the virtual cocoon will be to achieve widespread adoption and economic success, but we do assume it will need to be low-cost, easy to interface with and highly portable."
My kind of design project.
Posted by: csven | July 15, 2008 at 06:37 PM