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From: james@TWG.COM (James Marshall)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Cheap Force Feedback for VR?
Message-ID: <14436@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 15 Jan 91 00:06:50 GMT
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In article <13542@milton.u.washington.edu> chris@ug.cs.dal.ca (Chris Robertson) 
writes:
>> Of course, use in a VR
>> application would require that the fluid have a boundary zone before it
>> turns solid, for graduations in force-feedback ...
>
>Yes, boundary zone.  Big problem.  Without precise amounts of just the
>right catalysts, temperature, etc., it seems very much a threshold event.

One possible solution is to divide each fluid cell into, say, 10 layers,
each of which can be electrified separately.  The pressure is therefore
quantized, but you do get a range of possible pressures.

>But the gel-pocket is pushing OUT as much as IN, which is only counter-
>acted by the pull of the glove fabric on the BACK of the hand ...

Pressures of small area on the palm would mostly work, since the pressure
would be evenly distributed over the whole back of the hand.

-James Marshall
 james@twg.com