Haptic gloves – using solid state fluid feedback

Haptic gloves – using solid state fluid feedback

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VR and AR have been on a tear lately. But one of the things missing from VR is actual physical feedback when interacting with objects. Haptic feedback isn’t new; but the methods used so far are pretty crude. Currently developed/in development systems from Meta and Haptx use tubes with compressed air. The physical limitations of these systems make them expensive, noisy, and bulky. (A recent Apple patent also hints at their methods)

Enter Fluid Reality. They have developed a system that utilizes an electro-osmotically powered array of pixels that are placed on the fingertips in the gloves. These give a sensation of touch feedback by physically raising/lowering the pixels to simulate the surface (rough, smooth, ridges/edges, etc). But they don’t use air, they use liquid. That method means they can use much smaller, solid state osmatic pumps. This means the entire apparatus can likely fit entirely on the hand instead of needing bulky air systems.

Harrison’s team uses liquid to create touch sensations, resulting in a more precise and quieter system compared to conventional VR gloves that run on pressurized air. This technology can generate more complex touch sensations and is based on the principle of electromagnetic induction, using an electromagnetic field to move liquid within the glove’s liquid chambers. A small battery and standard printed circuit board (PCB) hardware are sufficient for the operation of this technology.

They use solid state, electro-osmatic pumps which means they are much cheaper and all the electronics can fit on the hand instead of needing connection to larger external apparatus.

Read more about it in their paper.

Links:

Nopia

Nopia

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The Nopia is a midi chord generator from Martin Grieco that lets you play around with different parts of tonal harmony theory to build really cool musical chords and arpeggios. It seems like a great beginner tool for building up great backing sounds.

It’s a beautiful little device that almost looks like something right out of original Star Trek. Perhaps they took some inspiration from Teenage Engineering.

Teenage engineering – the new Bang and Olufsen?

Teenage engineering – the new Bang and Olufsen?

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Teenage Engineering is a funky little product design company. They have an eclectic collection of beautifully designed products from a desk, to bags and clothes, to a flat pack computer case – but primarily focus on audio devices. What they’re really known for above the products themselves – is there incredible design.

One of the coolest new devices is probably the TP-7 audio recorder. These devices do a top-notch job technically; and are even more striking for their design. This one features a spinning wheel while recording and playing back that you can hold to stop playback or shuttle back and forth like a mixing dj.

The devices aren’t for everyone. They come at eye-watering prices that relegate them to lifestyle purchasers that care more about looks than price. As an example, the TP-7 is $1499. And less you think that’s ridiculous for a hand-held audio recorder – it is currently sold out.

There seems to be a trend towards interesting new designs for our gadgets. It reminds me a bit of the Nopia.

Extracting Bitlocker keys in just a few seconds

Extracting Bitlocker keys in just a few seconds

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Stacksmashing demonstrates that the communication between the CPU and TPM is unencrypted and can be snooped by attaching wires to the traces between them. This is not new, but now has all the source/board design to make it easier – on old systems with a long known security flaw of exposed traces.

This isn’t really new info. It requires numerous things to be right: physical access to the device and non-integrated TPM with a design flaw. Modern CPUs don’t have this easily exploitable design given the TPM is integrated into the die now. This was somewhat common in early days. At one point just connecting a firewire cable into a Mac let you read the encryption keys out of memory from a sleeping or running Apple.

Additionally, Bitlocker using TPM without pin was cracked years ago using fairly common electronic components. Any secure Bitlocker deployment has long been understood to be using TPM and a pin.

A reminder that security is only as good as its weakest link

Links:

  • https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/youtuber-breaks-bitlocker-encryption-in-less-than-43-seconds-with-sub-dollar10-raspberry-pi-pico
  • https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-bitlocker-attack-puts-laptops-storing-sensitive-data-at-risk/
  • https://github.com/stacksmashing/pico-tpmsniffer
20 minute conversation with a whale

20 minute conversation with a whale

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Star Trek IV: The Journey Home saw the Enterprise crew returning to the 20th century to save a pair of humpback whales. During their search, Spock jumped into their tank and communicated with Gracie – a humpback whale. What was science fiction may now have some scientific backing.

A research team (who called themselves Whale-SETI) successfully held a ‘conversation’ with a humpback whale named Twain for about 20 minutes.

Before you get too excited, all they did was play back a recorded humpback “contact” call. Twain approached and circled their boat, responding in a conversational manner to the whale’s greeting signal. Twain consistently matched the interval variations between each playback call.

I don’t know if I’d call it rocket science or really communicating by playing back a recording – but it is an interesting first start with some experimentations around timing/latency.

Articles:

Talking Strips

Talking Strips

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Here’s a fun science toy: Talking Tape Strips. The plastic strip has groves cut on it so that if you run your thumbnail across is, it plays back a little recorded sound.

Definitely very low fidelity and apparently takes a good bit of work to get it right, but pretty interesting little toy.

Genius: AI generated comic books

Genius: AI generated comic books

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I gotta hand it to Nathan Truesdell. He has a whole line of AI based coloring books – that likely took him all of an afternoon to create. It’s highly likely it only took him an hour or two with some prompts to make the line art. He then probably worked with an online physical book publisher – who may even be printing them up on demand for him to avoid handling stock or shipping – and now sits back and watches the money roll in with pretty much zero effort.

He didn’t even bother to fix the 7 fingers and thumb.

Critics don’t create progress or change things

Critics don’t create progress or change things

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“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

—Theodore Roosevelt
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Ultimately, it is the person that DOES something who ultimately changes the world. Everyone else sits on social media or their couch and lives with the changes the doers have made to the world.

This doesn’t mean those people are right – we’ve seen plenty of examples of that. If you don’t like what the doers of things are out there are doing – or how society is going – you need to get out there and get into the arena.