Developers of mobile touch technology are busy working on ways to use haptic technology, which provides vibrations and other physical sensations that can be used to communicate emotions, in mobile applications. While haptic technology is already in use in a number of non-mobile applications, such as medical training where it is used to make procedures that are performed on a simulator feel real in order for medical personnel to develop a better understanding of how to perform a procedure on patients, the use of haptics in mobile phones is still in its infancy state.
Samsung Electronics currently leading the way with products like the Omnia phone, which vibrates to confirm each touch of the screen and a vibration to indicate that a call has been dropped, but the wider deployment of haptic-enabled phones will open the door to a whole new realm of applications. Immersion Corp., a haptics developer based in San Jose, Calif., says that three mobile carriers will be launching applications in the next nine months that the company created to allow users to communicate emotions nonverbally. For example, frustration can be communicated by shaking the user’s phone, which will create a vibration that will be felt by the other party. That person might then choose to respond with what the developers call a “love tap”—a rhythmic tapping on the phone that will produce a heartbeat-like series of vibrations on the other party’s phone.
Interesting!
For more information on the future of mobile touch technology, see this article in the Wall Street Journal.