How next-gen artificial companions could borrow a page or two from the Magic Kingdom’s Audio-Animatronics
If you’re a regular reader, you’re likely well aware of how many—sometimes wildly unique—approaches there have been to bringing a sense of touch to virtual reality experiences or, what we’re here for, giving synthetic companions ultra-lifelike, human-feeling skins.
Enter a pair of University of California, Santa Barbara researchers who’ve taken yet another angle: a display that allows viewers to feel as well as see what they’re looking at.
Though in its early stages, the work of PhD candidate Max Linnander and professor Yon Visell of the university’s RE Touch Lab could be what sexbot developers have been looking for—with a little help from, of all people, Disney’s Audio-Animatronics Imagineers.
Feeling the Future
Published in Science Robotics, the Linnander and Visell system employs a network of millimeter-wide optotactile pixels that, when struck from behind by a low-intensity laser, illuminate and—courtesy of each pixel’s built-in air pocket—produce a small but haptically detectable bump.
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“I put my finger on the pixel and felt a clear tactile pulse whenever the light flashed,” Yon Visell told Futurity. “That was a special moment—the moment we knew the core idea could work.”
Yon Visell further explained that the technology was scalable, demonstrated by the team already producing an impressive 1,500-pixel screen; far more than any other haptic displays before or since.
Touching Tomorrow
Here’s where Disney might come in. You see, while for many years their theme park Audio-Animatronics relied on relatively simple mechanisms in order to perform equally limited facial movements, their famous Imagineers recently began thinking outside that clunky old box.
Recently patented—and already part of many of their attractions—rather than struggling to give their figures realistic expressions, they made them almost featureless, essentially blank surfaces given life by networks of computer-controlled, motion-tracking projectors.
All fine and/or dandy for static theme park attractions, though not so much for hopefully-movable—or perhaps someday fully ambulatory—artificial companions.
Agreed, we might be getting a bit out there technology-wise, but we might someday be able to marry the RE Touch Lab’s work with a novel take on projection mapping by swapping an external image source for an interior one.
For example, imagine our artificial robot’s skin as either a full-body haptic display screen, one capable of looking and feeling however you or anyone wants, or just a tactile surface with colors, patterns, and so forth illuminated from within.
Embracing the Possibilities
Obviously, the former would be preferable. But even if the technology is decades away, having a user-configurable, fully haptic head has a lot going for it. No less so, how, like Disney’s new Audio-Animatronics, it could do everything a human face can do without any of the distressingly odd, uncanny valley awkwardness of a mechanical replica.
Additionally, you would be able to change everything about it—color, textures, expressions, the list goes on and on—without needing to replace one head with another: merely tap a special smartphone app and, lo and behold, your companion can resemble whoever you desire.
And compliments of an advanced version of RE Touch Lab tech, it would also feel however you want. Probably the most challenging, as you would need to create a microscopic array of specialized optotactiles—kind of like how our tongues have different taste buds—in order to replicate as a pulsating array of different sensations, it’s still a possibility. Albeit one we may not see for a decade or more—a lot more.
As we like to say when discussing these and other exciting new haptic technologies, the RE Touch Lab’s work—or (ahem) borrowing from Disney’s Imagineers—may not get us where we want to go. In all likelihood, what will be is going to be a little of this, a little of that, mixed in with a hefty dose of good, old-fashioned creativity.
Which, when you think about it, has already helped us fulfill so many of our sexually futuristic fantasies—and, in the process, showed us there’s nothing we can’t do if we put our minds and especially our imaginations to it.
Image Sources: Depositphotos
