Tag: Vibration

Spider-Man’s Spider Sense alerts him to danger and allows his body to react on its own to avoid attacks. Thinkgeek’s Tingling Electronic Spidey Sense T-shirt on the other hand only alerts you when someone – or something – is behind you.

It’s impossible to truly master typing on a tiny touch screen, hence the existence of peripherals like laser keyboards or this iPhone case. But what if your smartphone could use any surface as a keyboard without the help of additional devices?

The Kajimoto research group at the University of Electro-Communications has invented a device that simulates something passing through your hand. It’s been made to improve the reality of some games and uses a vibration mechanism to create the sensory illusion.

This has to be one of the most minimal watches that I’ve ever seen, and it also has a vibrating alarm function, which is something that I’ve been wanting to see in a watch for a long time.

If you’re looking for a way to wake up without the jarring sounds of an alarm clock, you might want to check out this new watch that uses vibrations to get you out of bed instead of an audible alarm.

Not that this idea is really good for anything other than looking cool, you’ve gotta hand it to these Japanese researchers, who have managed to create a special tank which can momentarily suspend illustrations in water. By sending precisely coordinated pulses through the water, the National Maritime Research Institute is able to generate  pre-determined shapes out of the waves.

No, these bug-eyed critters aren’t going to bite. On the contrary – these insect-inspired mini robots are actually quite harmless. In between farming blueberry crops, Adam Claflin of MiddleCreekMerchants makes the little Wigglebot robots (shown above) from a few bent wires for legs, a coin battery for a body, and a pair of colorful LEDs for eyes.

How many times have you had to get your lazy ass off of the couch to get up and change the channel because the batteries in your remote died. Well thanks to some fine high-tech minds, someday you may never need to worry about changing the batteries in your remote again. This unassuming looking prototype might not look like much, but it’s actually the EZ-REM-0001, the very first remote control to require no batteries at all.

What do you get when you take a couple of bright red LEDs, a tiny circuit board, a few wires and strap them to a couple of batteries ? I’ll tell you what you get. You get Machine PP3, a teensy, weensy little pocket sized robot that will charm the socks off of anyone he meets. Designed by inventor Wayne Poulton of Addject, Machine PP3 glides and spins along any smooth surface while his little bug-like red eyeballs light his way.

Got a spare cardboard box lying around? How about an old suitcase? Why not turn your junk into a speaker? Fresh from the streets of Japan, the Yorozu Audio Sound Revolution kit lets you transform just about anything into a speaker. Simply mount the Yorozu’s vibrating sonic transducer wherever you want it, and it’ll turn the surface into a conductive sound system.

If the Screaming Meanie alarm clock had you grabbing your ears in pain, maybe this alarm will work better for you. Instead of waking you up with shrill beeps or buzzy klaxons, this new clock rouses you (or is that A-rouses you?)

This strange appendage snaps on to the bottom of your standard PlayStation 3 SIXAXIS joystick, turning it into a poor-man’s DualShock controller. PEGA’s oddly-named “Vibrating Bag” adds rumble capability to your stock PS3 controller. Now they don’t specify if the vibration actually works when the game generates its feedback signal, or if the thing just continuously rumbles.

A couple of years back, Immersion sued Sony for $91 million for infringing on their patents when they made their Dual Shock controllers for the PlayStation 2. The company claimed that Sony was using patented force-feedback technologies without paying royalties.

One of the biggest problems with touchscreen interfaces is the lack of any sort of tactile feedback. In response to this concern, Samsung has released a touchscreen phone with Immersion’s VibeTonz haptic feedback system. The Samsung SCH-W559 phone provides users with a vibration that approximates the sensation of a key click when they interact with the phone’s touchscreen.