Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says these boots
Speaker 1: are made for walking. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and our other host, Lauren voc obamb is still unto
Speaker 1: the weather, but she will be back with us next time.
Speaker 1: I'm quite sure. Yeah, pretty pretty pretty positive on that.
Speaker 1: And don't don't worry about her. She's doing fine. She
Speaker 1: just got this scratching through. It's a bit of a
Speaker 1: shame because she's the one who actually pitched this episode topic,
Speaker 1: wasn't she. I think so so, Jonathan, I have a
Speaker 1: question for you. Asked me, did you remever did you
Speaker 1: ever own a pair of moon boots? I I can
Speaker 1: honestly say, with on conviction that I have never owned
Speaker 1: a pair of moon boots. You're aware of what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. That not not the actual boots that astronauts wear.
Speaker 1: I'm so you mean the style of boots known as
Speaker 1: moon boots. Yeah. No, I I had never owned a
Speaker 1: pair of those. I have warned things that I suspect
Speaker 1: we're equivalent to moon boots, at least in their the
Speaker 1: clunkiness factor. But I personally have never owned any Oh
Speaker 1: that may be what I had when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: I had some puffy boots that I referred to as
Speaker 1: moon boots. I don't know if moon boots is a brand,
Speaker 1: that a brand. Well anyway, I don't know one way
Speaker 1: or another. But I had some puffy boots that were
Speaker 1: quite beloved to me, and I wore them out in
Speaker 1: the snow, and I wore them out in the summer
Speaker 1: also just because I thought they looked cool. Wow. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know it just tells me a lot about you, Joe,
Speaker 1: and and be proud of who you are. But we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk today about a specific type of of
Speaker 1: approach to designing shoes for astronauts specifically, but there are
Speaker 1: implications beyond that that addressed some problems that they've encountered
Speaker 1: in the past. So let's let's talk about why we
Speaker 1: would even have this conversation in the first place. What
Speaker 1: is the big issue? What is the problem astronauts face.
Speaker 1: The problem is astronauts are always too intoxicated to walk
Speaker 1: around properly. No that's not true, No, not at all.
Speaker 1: That we we are. But however, if you were to
Speaker 1: watch certain videos, you might get that impression. Because Jonathan,
Speaker 1: did you watch the astronauts falling over? So did I? Even?
Speaker 1: I even have a little little note that I put
Speaker 1: on there. Okay, So Joe decided to kind of watch
Speaker 1: this video and then he shared the video in our
Speaker 1: notes of astronauts having difficulty standing upright while walking about
Speaker 1: on the Moon's surface. And that's really what this episode
Speaker 1: is all about, Like, how can people design uh a
Speaker 1: system that allows astronauts to walk around on a surface
Speaker 1: like the Moon's surface without the danger constantly falling over,
Speaker 1: because based upon the YouTube video you've sent, it looks
Speaker 1: like that is a common issue. Well, it's kind of funny,
Speaker 1: isn't it, Like they walking can be hard when you're
Speaker 1: on the moon, you know, yeah, I I wrote. My
Speaker 1: comment on the video was this is majestic. You really
Speaker 1: get the sense of achievement and grandeur as you watch
Speaker 1: chubby figures fall about in the dust. It really is
Speaker 1: like watching little toddlers fall over in a sandbox a lot.
Speaker 1: But it's not the fault of the astronauts. It's just
Speaker 1: really hard to get around in bulky spacesuits. And once
Speaker 1: you're down, it looks like it's pretty challenging to get
Speaker 1: back up again. Yeah, they kind of try all these
Speaker 1: little moves to sort of pop back up, but they
Speaker 1: keep falling over and they look like crazy breakdancing moves
Speaker 1: at some points. Because there's one point where you see
Speaker 1: a guy who is holding himself up in a horizontal position,
Speaker 1: like like parallel to the Moon's surface, on his hands
Speaker 1: and just trying to push himself up so they can
Speaker 1: get his feet up underneath himself. It's pretty incredible. And
Speaker 1: of course this isn't just the Moon. This is presumably
Speaker 1: true for other space environments like Mars and other foreign
Speaker 1: planets as well, where asteroids as well. That kind of
Speaker 1: probably even harder on asteroids, the lack of i mean
Speaker 1: almost you know, no negligible gravity. Yeah yeah, so, uh
Speaker 1: so space suits are bulky their pressurized environments, and they
Speaker 1: can tend to cause a feeling of perceptual segregation from
Speaker 1: the outer atmosphere. You know, you're like you're living in
Speaker 1: this interior world and just sort of vaguely bubble buoying through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like your perception is thrown off. Yeah, so they have
Speaker 1: to be bulky, of course, because if you know, they
Speaker 1: have all these built in protections, shielding regulatory systems. But
Speaker 1: this often leaves the astronaut with a sort of limited
Speaker 1: ability to sense their surroundings both by sight and by touch.
Speaker 1: Right and then with that reduced gravity that I would
Speaker 1: imagine adds another element of uncertainty and and and kind
Speaker 1: of clumsiness to the whole thing. I imagine that walking
Speaker 1: around on the Moon is a lot like have you
Speaker 1: ever gone up a set of stairs that you've gone
Speaker 1: up and down a thousand times and you're not really
Speaker 1: paying attention, and in your mind you're thinking there's either
Speaker 1: one more or one fewer step than actually are there
Speaker 1: on the stairs, And that is a a really alarming
Speaker 1: thing to have happened to you that moment. You either
Speaker 1: take an extra step on a stair that's not there,
Speaker 1: or you fail to take that extra step and you
Speaker 1: miss a step that actually is there. I argue often
Speaker 1: that it's worse going down than going up, Like I've
Speaker 1: tried to step down at the bottom of a set
Speaker 1: of stairs when I thought there was one more to go,
Speaker 1: and it is the most jarring experience to try and
Speaker 1: step down where you cannot because there is solid floor there, though,
Speaker 1: I imagine it is much more jarring to step down
Speaker 1: thinking you should be experiencing about you know, point eight
Speaker 1: more g s than you are, right, and then you
Speaker 1: end up falling over as a result because you have
Speaker 1: either underestimated or overestimated. You couldn't really tell when you
Speaker 1: were making contact. You didn't really know when you could
Speaker 1: shift your weight, and so you either do so prematurely
Speaker 1: or you're not quite ready to do so when you
Speaker 1: need to. All of these factors come into play, and
Speaker 1: it explains why we get this wonderful sequence of astronauts
Speaker 1: falling over as if they're just completely helpless on the
Speaker 1: surface of the moon. But of course, when you were
Speaker 1: on a literal moonwalk falling over, despite how funny the
Speaker 1: video is, that's not a good idea. You don't want
Speaker 1: to be doing that. Number One, space suits are pretty
Speaker 1: well shielded, but there's always a chance that you could
Speaker 1: damage or puncture something vital. That's just pretty much everything
Speaker 1: on the space suit. Yeah. Then on top of that,
Speaker 1: there's just the waste of limited time and oxygen resources
Speaker 1: lying stuck on the ground like this marshmallow man turtle thing. Right,
Speaker 1: If you have a specific set of goals for your moonwalk.
Speaker 1: You don't want to get stuck for ten minutes trying
Speaker 1: to get up. Yeah, becausebviously, whenever any of that stuff
Speaker 1: gets planned out back on Earth in the initial stages
Speaker 1: where you've you've got your mission parameter set, you're gonna
Speaker 1: build in extra time. Right, You're never going to say,
Speaker 1: let's let's really cut this to the wire, right that
Speaker 1: that makes no sense. However, if you fall over, then
Speaker 1: you start eating up that extra time that was built in,
Speaker 1: and and this is a real concern. Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: story that made us want to do this episode today
Speaker 1: is about a particular response to this kind of problem.
Speaker 1: So the story refers to some work done by M I. T. S.
Speaker 1: Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics or Aero Astro and the
Speaker 1: Charles Stark Draper Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I love the
Speaker 1: fact that's in Stark Labs. Yes it is, but they're
Speaker 1: not that Stark because he works alone. It's a Stark contrast,
Speaker 1: I imagine it is. Now. So they've been working on
Speaker 1: this potential solution and it is space boots with environmental
Speaker 1: swerves and embedded haptic motors. So it works like this.
Speaker 1: Imagine you are an astronaut on the surface of the
Speaker 1: Moon and you're shoveling up some barrels of lunar regular
Speaker 1: to transport back to Earth, where it has become a
Speaker 1: wildly popular flavoring agent in hot cuisine, of course. But
Speaker 1: of course you are walking through a shallow dip on
Speaker 1: the lunar surface and you feel a sudden vibration on
Speaker 1: the outside toe of your left foot, so you stop,
Speaker 1: you take a step back, You look down, you see, oh,
Speaker 1: there it is. It's a rock, or maybe it's a
Speaker 1: little room bus sized robotic rover sitting deactivated in your way,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Having avoided tripping over it, you go
Speaker 1: around scoop up some more of the ultra fine particles
Speaker 1: of cash money. Pretty simple, right, So you don't have
Speaker 1: to depend on your eyes. You've got a tactle sensation,
Speaker 1: this vibration that warns you to stop moving and reach
Speaker 1: out your course. And that's exactly what we mean when
Speaker 1: we talk about haptic feedback. If you're not familiar with
Speaker 1: the term haptics, it really means engaging your sense of
Speaker 1: touch in a way that gives you more information about something,
Speaker 1: whether it's your environment, or a virtual environment or something
Speaker 1: along those lines. A very basic example of this is
Speaker 1: you likely have a smartphone or cell phone that has
Speaker 1: a little motor that vibrates when you get a call
Speaker 1: or a text. That's a haptic feedback system telling you, hey,
Speaker 1: you've got an alert. So maybe it doesn't make an
Speaker 1: audible alert so that you know if you're at work,
Speaker 1: you're not having your phone go grouper or whatever. Well,
Speaker 1: here's one. If you have a touch screen keypad on
Speaker 1: your phone, very likely the phone vibrates ever so gently
Speaker 1: when you correctly press a key, so that so that
Speaker 1: you know you did hit the key instead of sort
Speaker 1: of going off the side and not registering the the
Speaker 1: input right, or that you just start typing you know,
Speaker 1: h h h h h h h for hello, because
Speaker 1: you haven't figured out if you're actually, you know, making
Speaker 1: that contact with the screen or not right. And I
Speaker 1: found out when when my phone's power saving features go
Speaker 1: on when it's low on battery and it stops doing
Speaker 1: that that response. Yeah, I find it disturbing when I'm
Speaker 1: typing with my fingers, I'm like, wait a minute, am
Speaker 1: I am I typing? I don't know if the letters
Speaker 1: are going Yeah, I've gotten used to it. I had
Speaker 1: turned mine off when I was at home, um after
Speaker 1: a certain time, Like I could, I could create parameters
Speaker 1: of when haptic feedback was turned on or turned off,
Speaker 1: and that was specifically so that I didn't disturb either
Speaker 1: my wife or my dog whenever I decided to look
Speaker 1: on something on my phone and look something gup, because
Speaker 1: every every time I would type, you get this little
Speaker 1: haptic buzz and it would be distracting. But I also
Speaker 1: found it very difficult to navigate on my phone without
Speaker 1: it because without that feedback to reassure me that yes,
Speaker 1: indeed your touch has been has been registered, I felt
Speaker 1: like I wasn't properly activating my phone. So haptic is
Speaker 1: a very powerful kind of disciplines of a very powerful
Speaker 1: technology or strategy. I guess you could say to engage
Speaker 1: our senses in another way and give us additional information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a way of repurposing information that you
Speaker 1: would get through one sense and feeding it through a
Speaker 1: different one. So in July of this year, researchers presented
Speaker 1: their findings on on these haptic feedback boots boots for
Speaker 1: space at the International Conference on Human Computer interaction, and
Speaker 1: specifically they've been studying what types of sensations applied to
Speaker 1: which regions of the foot do the best job of
Speaker 1: keeping people from tripping over things, or actually that that
Speaker 1: part would be inferred, because really what they're looking for
Speaker 1: first is like when people can feel the sensation and
Speaker 1: how well they can feel it right, and and can
Speaker 1: they identify from what direction it's it is coming? So
Speaker 1: that way, like if we were to have the outer
Speaker 1: left edge of your foot, uh, buzz, would that translate
Speaker 1: in your mind, Oh, there's something forward and to the
Speaker 1: left of me that I need to look out for. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: And and there are lots of different options for how
Speaker 1: you could provide haptic feature right. So you know, our
Speaker 1: nervous systems are kind of quirky for reasons of evolutionary happenstance,
Speaker 1: and so they respond better to some stimuli than to others.
Speaker 1: So they actually looked into what works best. So scientists
Speaker 1: Alison Gibson, Andrea Webb and Leah Sterling conducted this study
Speaker 1: to find out exactly how good people are at detecting
Speaker 1: different kinds of sensations on their feet under various conditions.
Speaker 1: On my feet, my feet were tingling reading about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting to hear about the experiments because they
Speaker 1: included everything from kind of a straightforward approach where they said,
Speaker 1: are you gonna feel a buzz? I need you to
Speaker 1: tell me, like, on a scale of maybe one to ten,
Speaker 1: how strong was that buzz and where on your foot
Speaker 1: did you feel it? And then they start and making
Speaker 1: it a little more complicated by making people like do
Speaker 1: things while they're administering the buzzes and try and see like, well,
Speaker 1: can they still accurately describe the intensity and the location
Speaker 1: because this obviously that would be important. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're walking around the surface of the moon, you're probably
Speaker 1: not just completely focused on how are my feet feeling
Speaker 1: right now? No, you're trying to get that delicious regulars
Speaker 1: back to your back to your transfer. Emerald will not
Speaker 1: wait for his for his moon spice bam. So if
Speaker 1: you want to look up their their presentation, it's it's
Speaker 1: called user abilities in detecting vibro tactle signals on the
Speaker 1: feet under varying attention loads. Vibro Tactle is amazing, what
Speaker 1: a great word, And yeah, varying attention loads obviously that's
Speaker 1: the reference to what I was talking about earlier. But
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you have to create some distractions, nothing
Speaker 1: of real like importance or or urgency, but rather just
Speaker 1: something to occupy the person's mind. So that example is
Speaker 1: one of the independent variables they tested attention state whether
Speaker 1: you're distracted by other stuff. Another one was vibration locations
Speaker 1: of tow or heel in step or outside, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: then the third was vibration signal type. And this is
Speaker 1: not correct, but I wish this meant good vibrations versus
Speaker 1: bad vibrations bad vibes manuh no. In actuality, the different
Speaker 1: vibration types were high, low, increasing and decreasing, increasing and decreasing.
Speaker 1: Matter because of something I'll get to in a bit, well,
Speaker 1: well before before we get into that, just for a
Speaker 1: clarification on my own part, because this was something that
Speaker 1: I missed when I was reading it. When they say
Speaker 1: high and low, are they talking about frequency or intensity? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: actually I think it's intensity, But I'm not positive because
Speaker 1: I was it's intensity. I would think so too, because
Speaker 1: to me that would just mean like, is the motor
Speaker 1: vibrating at a greater intense stealer as in, is it
Speaker 1: making heart of great bigger vibrations is the ample alitude
Speaker 1: increased as opposed to is the frequency increase. I would
Speaker 1: imagine the same thing. That was my interpretation, but I
Speaker 1: didn't actually read Yeah, okay, co uh So these could
Speaker 1: be delivered to six different places on each foot and
Speaker 1: that results in twenty four unique different kinds of signals.
Speaker 1: And then they also, like you said, they ran a
Speaker 1: distraction test, so they were like, let me know if
Speaker 1: you can feel anything on your feet and uh and
Speaker 1: what it is, where it's coming in, and what it
Speaker 1: feels like. But then also do that while I show
Speaker 1: you a random number and you start to count up
Speaker 1: by threes Jonathan twenty four, thirty thirty three, thirty six.
Speaker 1: I gave you an easy one. Let me get a
Speaker 1: hard no no, no, no no, don't don't have a
Speaker 1: liberal arts major. Uh So, But it turns out even
Speaker 1: with a pretty simple test like this subject has had
Speaker 1: some difficulty. They they had trouble identifying when the vibration,
Speaker 1: for example, was steadily increasing, so that that's not just
Speaker 1: the on and off high and low sensation, but when
Speaker 1: it's slowly getting more intense and even in the undistracted condition,
Speaker 1: so even when they're not trying to do the counting.
Speaker 1: People did not do a great job of detecting when
Speaker 1: vibration was decreasing in intensity. Uh. And also no surprise here,
Speaker 1: but some parts of the foot are just more sensitive
Speaker 1: than others. You know, the middle of the outside of
Speaker 1: the foot was pretty dumb. By the way, A little side. Now,
Speaker 1: do you ever play that game where you touch somebody's
Speaker 1: back with different numbers of fingers and asked them how
Speaker 1: many it is you should you should agree beforehand with
Speaker 1: the person you're playing, right, there's consent is absolutely don't
Speaker 1: don't surprise somebody with this game. I've I've played variations
Speaker 1: of that, like as a kid. There's also the I'm
Speaker 1: gonna draw something on your back, tell me what it
Speaker 1: was you I drew and I, uh, it's difficult. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people don't realize how dumb their backs are. The tactle
Speaker 1: neurons back there is just I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm touching your touch somebody with three fingers and they're like,
Speaker 1: oh one right, yeah, let's say. And so you think
Speaker 1: about it, like, there are definitely gonna be areas of
Speaker 1: the foot that will be more responsive to to haptic
Speaker 1: feedback than others. And when they were talking about increasing
Speaker 1: or decreasing the intensity, I could easily imagine that being
Speaker 1: a difficult thing to uh, to detect even so much.
Speaker 1: Is like, even if I have a phone in my
Speaker 1: hand and I'm increasing the motor intensity until you get
Speaker 1: to like unless it unless it does does it in
Speaker 1: big jumps, the differences can be fairly subtle, And then
Speaker 1: I think, well, what if I felt that on my foot,
Speaker 1: and what if that were the important determining factor. Like,
Speaker 1: as I approach a potential stumbling block, the intensity increases. Uh,
Speaker 1: if it is to settle, then that becomes kind of useless.
Speaker 1: It just is going to be a constant distraction as
Speaker 1: I look around, and maybe I can't identify what the
Speaker 1: thing is because it's not quite close enough for me
Speaker 1: to notice that it is something I'm going to stumble over. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then next thing, you know, I start to ignore
Speaker 1: this this buzzing because so frequently it's not helpful, and
Speaker 1: then I'm falling all over again. That exactly is a
Speaker 1: problem people are worried about. Okay, so how do you
Speaker 1: keep people from tuning out the feedback? Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to have it be urgent enough that it's meaningful, but
Speaker 1: not so urgent that it is that it's misleading right there.
Speaker 1: It's a delicate balance, but you can see where it
Speaker 1: could become really useful if you have the sensors in
Speaker 1: a boot and you have the alert happen where it's
Speaker 1: not gonna be so sensitive that it's it's it's set
Speaker 1: off by everything, because then you're just like, well, all
Speaker 1: I can tell you is being on the moon is
Speaker 1: crappy because all my feet are just buzzing. These dogs
Speaker 1: are buzzing. In other words, that's an alternate title for
Speaker 1: this episode. Yes, so of course this technology it's still
Speaker 1: got a lot of ground to cover as the study,
Speaker 1: but a lot of moon ground. Because while a simple
Speaker 1: on off vibration might be somewhat helpful, one thing about
Speaker 1: the world around us is it's best represented by continuous data,
Speaker 1: not on off analogue rather than digital. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: the increasing and decreasing quantities would probably be the best
Speaker 1: way to represent something like proximity or even like the
Speaker 1: the size of the potential obstacle, because again we have
Speaker 1: you have such a limited field of view inside a
Speaker 1: space helmet, right like it cuts off your field of
Speaker 1: view significantly. Uh, you might want to use intensity to
Speaker 1: indicate perhaps not the distance to the obstacle, but perhaps
Speaker 1: the the size of the obstacle, like whether or not
Speaker 1: it's a sizeable rock that's ahead of you that you
Speaker 1: might stumble over, or a drop down that's been you know,
Speaker 1: that's your boot has uh detected where you know you
Speaker 1: don't want to have that next step forward be four
Speaker 1: inches lower than what you had anticipated. Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: the mn T news piece that covered this particular research also,
Speaker 1: I thought this was interesting. Spoke to a doctor, Shirley
Speaker 1: right Dick, professor of Health and Kinesiology at Perdue, who
Speaker 1: specializes She specializes in like falling down. Basically, so do I,
Speaker 1: but not not. I don't have the credentials. I just
Speaker 1: have the experience America's Funniest Home Videos professor. And but
Speaker 1: she pointed out that this would be useful for more
Speaker 1: than just astronauts. I think that that's clear. But for who,
Speaker 1: Well she gave the example of how about firefighters. So
Speaker 1: for firefighters, you go into a burning building, there's flames,
Speaker 1: there's smoke. Environmental navigation inside a burning building is a
Speaker 1: well known problem. Uh, And so this could be very
Speaker 1: useful for them too, And I imagine maybe deep sea divers.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know there there are lots of conditions where
Speaker 1: you don't want to be tripping over stuff and your
Speaker 1: personal visibility is going to be limited. And the even
Speaker 1: beyond that, we started talking and in fact articles have
Speaker 1: also been pointing this out. It's not just Joe and
Speaker 1: I have come up with this idea, but we've talked
Speaker 1: about how these sort of haptic feedback systems could be
Speaker 1: used for people in everyday situations, particularly people who may
Speaker 1: have uh problems with their vision. Yeah, exactly, So one
Speaker 1: obvious application would be for people with visual impairments. So
Speaker 1: at a certain level, this is harder than it sounds,
Speaker 1: because you can give somebody a vibration in their shoe
Speaker 1: if they're about to kick something, But how do you
Speaker 1: communicate more complex navigational information about a person surroundings without
Speaker 1: visual information. The thing about the astronauts is they should
Speaker 1: be able to see generally what's going on around them.
Speaker 1: The problem is they might not notice there's a rock
Speaker 1: at their foot. But but imagine you're completely blind and
Speaker 1: you're trying to use haptic feedback to give people navigational
Speaker 1: information about what's around them. You can you can give
Speaker 1: a kind of dumb and form, but it gets more
Speaker 1: difficult the more info you're trying to encode, right, So,
Speaker 1: so indicating that there's a possible surface that you're going
Speaker 1: to come into contact with right there, that's that's one thing.
Speaker 1: But to get to a level like the way, how
Speaker 1: about there's a street and there are cars on it
Speaker 1: right right. One of the things I thought about when
Speaker 1: we started talking about this is it's a a step
Speaker 1: toward spiky sense, but perhaps a better representation would even
Speaker 1: be Daredevil's heightened senses. That Daredevil's capable even though he's blind.
Speaker 1: Matt Murdoch spoiler alert is blind, he's capable of sensing
Speaker 1: through this this crazy heightened ability to almost see vibrations
Speaker 1: like he can he can sense sound at such a
Speaker 1: level that he can and he knows shapes of things
Speaker 1: and whether something is coming towards him or moving away
Speaker 1: from him. That level is well beyond a little motor
Speaker 1: vibrating against you to indicate that there's something you might
Speaker 1: be bumping into in the very near future. And um
Speaker 1: and while I think that this technology definitely has the
Speaker 1: potential to increase a person's environmental awareness, particularly someone who
Speaker 1: perhaps has has just become blind, who hasn't had hasn't
Speaker 1: been dealing with an impairment over the course of years. Uh,
Speaker 1: this might be something that is more helpful. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is something that is also under development. In fact,
Speaker 1: more m I T research. There. There's research on the
Speaker 1: hardware behind a wearable device that uses three D camera
Speaker 1: data to provide navigational feedback to people with visual impairments.
Speaker 1: It's been known as the Virtual Guide Dog. Interesting. But
Speaker 1: you know, Jonathan and I were talking before we came
Speaker 1: in here about the idea of of expanding this even
Speaker 1: farther with something that Jonathan dubbed pedestrian assist. Yeah, kind
Speaker 1: modeled after the driver assist systems that were familiar with
Speaker 1: things like you know, the lane assist, parking assist, breaking assist, acceleration,
Speaker 1: you know, cruise control. But in this case, obviously I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about your your shoes magically taking over for you, Like, hey, shoes,
Speaker 1: I want to go to the mall and they just
Speaker 1: start stepping and you're just like, hey, I can go
Speaker 1: to sleep now. Yeah, So it would be self powered,
Speaker 1: but it would be uh, sort of like a not
Speaker 1: self driving car for your feet, but self navigating car
Speaker 1: for your feet or or at least giving you Yeah,
Speaker 1: that driver assists that warning accident prevention right like you're
Speaker 1: going to hey, buddy, stop playing Pokemon Go for three
Speaker 1: freaking seconds. That is a thing, because you're gonna run
Speaker 1: into that street lamp. People have walked off of ledges,
Speaker 1: haven't they? I I have personally like I I play
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go, so full full disclosure. I play the game.
Speaker 1: I do not disclosing your conflict of interest, Yes, exactly, well,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that people know that I'm
Speaker 1: not making fun of folks who play Pokemon Go. I'm
Speaker 1: making fun of myself, a person who does play Pokemon Go.
Speaker 1: So subtle difference. I have made it a point when
Speaker 1: I started playing, and i've I've stayed true to this
Speaker 1: that I will not pay any attention to my phone
Speaker 1: whenever I am crossing streets, because I know I would
Speaker 1: be that person who stumbles over a curb and causes
Speaker 1: danger to myself, to others, to you know, giving drivers
Speaker 1: a heart attack, maybe possibly suffering a massive injury or
Speaker 1: perhaps even death because I'm not paying attention to what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, Because I am aware of this, and I've
Speaker 1: had situations where I have made contact with stationary objects
Speaker 1: because I was looking down at my screen and not up.
Speaker 1: Now in in my case, that stationary object was a
Speaker 1: tree branch that in my neighborhood. There's this one tree
Speaker 1: where the branches is slightly uh lower down to the
Speaker 1: ground than my height is. So if I don't duck,
Speaker 1: I will bang my head against it. But if I
Speaker 1: if I'm looking down towards my screen, it's out of
Speaker 1: my view, my field of view. So I have hit
Speaker 1: on more than one occasion the top of my head
Speaker 1: against this branch. Now, it hasn't always been because of Pokemon.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a real monster, that being my dog. So
Speaker 1: I'm often looking down at him, and I frequently nearly
Speaker 1: not quite close line myself. It's not quite low enough,
Speaker 1: but I do get knocked right at the crown of
Speaker 1: my head. Oh, I thought you were going to say
Speaker 1: that you were on the way home and face timing
Speaker 1: with him before. If my dog learns how to face time,
Speaker 1: it will be the end of times. But because I
Speaker 1: will never do anything ever again other than FaceTime with
Speaker 1: my dog. But no, it is definitely one of those things.
Speaker 1: Where if I were to have some sort of of
Speaker 1: sensor on me and clothing, they could say hey, dude,
Speaker 1: heads up, then I would not have that experience. Now,
Speaker 1: in my case, that was a very minor inconvenience. I
Speaker 1: was never hitting it so hard that I was causing
Speaker 1: myself real injury. It was more more than anything else.
Speaker 1: I was feeling embarrassed about clocking my head because I
Speaker 1: wasn't really paying attention to where I was going. But
Speaker 1: this could really end up being something that prevents injury
Speaker 1: and death if if actually rolled out to and incorporated
Speaker 1: in a larger number of of wearables. Yeah. And of course, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: you were mentioning something about the way haptics would be
Speaker 1: incorporated in uh in virtual reality and augmented reality environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is not unusual either. It's something that a
Speaker 1: lot of In fact, I would argue that the video
Speaker 1: game world has pushed the haptic discipline forward more than
Speaker 1: anything else as an effort to create more immersive experiences
Speaker 1: for gamers. So a very simple version of that is
Speaker 1: the rumble pack that you find in a lot of
Speaker 1: game controllers, right, that gives you that So like like
Speaker 1: when there's thunder in the game, the controller vibrates and
Speaker 1: gives you that sensation something that you don't even really
Speaker 1: necessarily register after you've played a lot of games with
Speaker 1: that kind of functionality. But when it's gone, you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that does make a difference. Well, in virtual reality,
Speaker 1: obviously you're in you're interacting with the world that doesn't exist, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's purely digital. It is over is replacing the
Speaker 1: physical world around you. Um, and it may mean that
Speaker 1: you need to do things like interact with certain objects
Speaker 1: in the world. When you include haptic feedback in that world,
Speaker 1: it increases that sense of immersion that you are really
Speaker 1: in that virtual environment. Uh, this is tricky to do, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we don't have a whole lot of examples. I've seen
Speaker 1: some stuff like I wore a vest at c S
Speaker 1: one year that was a haptic feedback vest for video
Speaker 1: games that would have lots of little actuators and motors
Speaker 1: in it so that when you got shot in a game,
Speaker 1: it would map. It would give you a good thud
Speaker 1: at the location of the shot, so if it was
Speaker 1: a like a shot in the shoulder, your shoulder would
Speaker 1: actually go thud. And yeah, that's not pleasant. They also
Speaker 1: had helmets. I did not try one of those on. Um,
Speaker 1: being a bald guy, I'm not thrilled about putting on
Speaker 1: helmets that other people have tried. Uh, you're the least
Speaker 1: susceptible to headlines. Well, I don't want to make other
Speaker 1: people think, oh, the sweaty bald guy just took that
Speaker 1: helmet off. Now I gotta put it on. And I
Speaker 1: don't like to share those kind of things. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's one of those things that again increases
Speaker 1: your sense of immersion. It could be very valuable. I've
Speaker 1: seen some really cool prototype devices that give that haptic
Speaker 1: feedback to create that that more convincing situation, which can
Speaker 1: be really useful whether it's a game or some other experience.
Speaker 1: Like have you seen the gloves that it looks like
Speaker 1: you put your fingers through a set of rings and
Speaker 1: each ring is attached to what looks almost like a piston.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I have, so, so each finger is
Speaker 1: on again they look like little pistons that that look
Speaker 1: like almost like pneumatic pistons, right, And the idea is
Speaker 1: that it creates resistance so that when you are picking
Speaker 1: up a virtual object in a game. It increases resistance
Speaker 1: as if you were actually gripping that object, so and
Speaker 1: you could you can adjust the level of resistance so
Speaker 1: a soft object has less resistance, so you can you know,
Speaker 1: you you definitely feel it. It's more than if you
Speaker 1: were to just open or close your hand, but a
Speaker 1: hard object would have greater resistance, hopefully mapped so that
Speaker 1: it would kind of like, quote unquote, feel like your
Speaker 1: hand is closing around an object of about the same
Speaker 1: size as what you're seeing on the screen. Now, that
Speaker 1: doesn't solve the problem of the fact that everything is
Speaker 1: weightless right like it's or or it's rather just the
Speaker 1: weight of whatever the actual glove you're wearing happens to be. Well,
Speaker 1: they need to make things in the gloves that adjust
Speaker 1: their mass and suddenly so it just converts energy to
Speaker 1: mass or releases an equivalent amount of energy when you
Speaker 1: drop it. You know, you set off a nuclear bomb
Speaker 1: every time you drop something from your inventory. No big deal, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know there are other ways of doing that,
Speaker 1: but it mostly involves turning your game room into like
Speaker 1: a crazy system of pulleys and restraints that are going
Speaker 1: to raise some questions in your average household, I imagine y. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But at any rate, the having this haptic feedback UH
Speaker 1: for for augmented reality or virtual reality very important because
Speaker 1: we are trying to marry a real experience with a
Speaker 1: digital one to some extent, you know, uh, replacing the
Speaker 1: real experience with a digital one in the case of
Speaker 1: virtual reality, augmenting in the case of a R. But
Speaker 1: either way you need to have or at least it
Speaker 1: it has been official to have that additional haptic feedback
Speaker 1: to make the experience more meaningful, powerful, memorable, uh, and
Speaker 1: even easy to navigate. Right Like, when you have that
Speaker 1: that force feedback and it reinforces the idea of this
Speaker 1: is a will experience, then it is easier to to
Speaker 1: create something that a user is going to find gratifying.
Speaker 1: If you don't have that there. Ultimately you have people
Speaker 1: who go through that experience who want to test the
Speaker 1: boundaries of what is what it's what is possible to
Speaker 1: do in there? And as soon as you find something
Speaker 1: that's not possible to do, you get that sense of, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's disappointing. I was really hoping I could do this thing,
Speaker 1: which is why like like there's um a game, the
Speaker 1: job simulator game for VR. We talked about the previous episode.
Speaker 1: Now there's haptic feedback doesn't really fit into this, but
Speaker 1: the the idea that you know, you start coming up
Speaker 1: with a concept like what would happen if I did this?
Speaker 1: Did they think about that? And whenever you try something
Speaker 1: and you realize, oh, they did think about it, and
Speaker 1: they created a funny outcome for this thing that I
Speaker 1: just came up with. It delights you because I mean
Speaker 1: someone has thought the same goofy stuff you thought and
Speaker 1: they built it into the experience. I would argue the
Speaker 1: same thing it's true with with haptic feedback is building
Speaker 1: the stuff in. It reminds you that other people are
Speaker 1: really thinking about these weird you know, outside the boundaries cases,
Speaker 1: and they're accounting for it. And that creates a really
Speaker 1: fun experience on your end, a discovery that is enjoyable.
Speaker 1: So there's not just the practical aspect of this can
Speaker 1: help you avoid getting hurt while you're walking around a
Speaker 1: physical space but you're in a virtual world. It can
Speaker 1: also enhance that experience itself, so they're not getting hurt matters.
Speaker 1: That doesn't matter. And we talked about this before we
Speaker 1: came in here too, about how some of the systems
Speaker 1: out there, like HTC vive rely on you moving around
Speaker 1: a physical space while playing in a virtual environment. You're
Speaker 1: not just sitting in a chair wearing a headset and
Speaker 1: holding a controller. Well, that does seem like the crucial
Speaker 1: next step. I mean, if you are inhabiting a virtual
Speaker 1: environment in which you can move your head as if
Speaker 1: you're really in the environment, you can't move the rest
Speaker 1: of your body as if you're really in the environment.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know. I mean, I don't have
Speaker 1: much experience with virtual reality. I haven't I haven't used
Speaker 1: any of this new generation or anything. But that seems
Speaker 1: like that would be a kind of frustrating disconnect or
Speaker 1: half measured. It can definitely, uh, at least in my case,
Speaker 1: make you give you a little bit of that motion
Speaker 1: sickness feeling. Not because usually it's that's due to latency,
Speaker 1: but if if it's because you are moving about using
Speaker 1: a controller, but you are moving your head as if
Speaker 1: you're in the space, there's a disconnect between Hey, this
Speaker 1: is not how I really navigate my environment in real
Speaker 1: meat space. So my my brain is saying this is
Speaker 1: weird because you're sitting still, you're and you don't feel
Speaker 1: an emotion from the chair. You are and you're feeling
Speaker 1: no sense of acceleration, and yet you are accelerating and
Speaker 1: decelerating based upon the visual stimulator giving you know what.
Speaker 1: That's it. Everyone in the stomach get out right, Like
Speaker 1: you just start to feel kind of sick to your stomach.
Speaker 1: Whereas with the HTC vibe and and similar products, you
Speaker 1: are actually moving. You you can physically move into space,
Speaker 1: but then you're you're you have the question of well,
Speaker 1: how do we make sure a person moving in a
Speaker 1: physical space doesn't slam up against the wall or trip
Speaker 1: over a chair or bang up against a desk. As
Speaker 1: we've talked about before, this introduces all kinds of other problems,
Speaker 1: Like it would be even cooler to have virtual environments
Speaker 1: where you could move with your body throughout the space,
Speaker 1: but you'd have to have a dedicated real world space
Speaker 1: it seems like, and of a decent size. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it would also in some way have to have to
Speaker 1: match the virtual space, Like what if you want to
Speaker 1: go uphill in the virtual space, Either the virtual space
Speaker 1: would have to be completely flat, or you would have
Speaker 1: to have like real world objects that are mapped to
Speaker 1: virtual objects, which I've seen, and at that point, like
Speaker 1: it's almost like why yeah, Because I mean like like
Speaker 1: I've seen some examples of let's have this this post
Speaker 1: here and we map it in the game. So it's
Speaker 1: a tree. So if you were to walk up, you
Speaker 1: could reach out and you could touch, and there would
Speaker 1: actually be a thing there where the tree is. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily feel like a tree that would be there.
Speaker 1: Um that kind of thing or uh, you know. I've
Speaker 1: also seen some interesting studies about how you can guide
Speaker 1: a person so that it feels like they're walking down
Speaker 1: a straight pathway but in reality, through visual cues, you
Speaker 1: are you're making them curves, so they're walking in a circle,
Speaker 1: but to them it feels like they're walking in a
Speaker 1: straight line. That kind of stuff is interesting, but ultimately
Speaker 1: you still have the concerned what happens when they get
Speaker 1: too close to the wall with the HTC vibe. The
Speaker 1: solution is to give a visual cue. Because you're using
Speaker 1: two sensors called lighthouses that are able to map out
Speaker 1: the room that you are in. You're supposed to put
Speaker 1: them in in diagonally opposite corners, and when you get
Speaker 1: close to a wall, there's an indication on in your
Speaker 1: view that you're getting too close to a wall. But
Speaker 1: you could do the same thing with haptic feedback, where
Speaker 1: you get a little bit of a of a pressure
Speaker 1: against some part of your body, not necessarily uh linked
Speaker 1: to gameplay, because you don't want to You don't want
Speaker 1: to create confusion, right, You don't want to make people
Speaker 1: think was that because it thundered in the game, Or
Speaker 1: am I I'm about to break my nose because I'm
Speaker 1: getting too close to the wall. But if you're able
Speaker 1: to differentiate, differentiate, and use that haptic feedback, it is
Speaker 1: kind of like having that spiky sense of Oh, I
Speaker 1: gotta I gotta be careful or I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: totally uh smack my face against the door any second, now,
Speaker 1: you know. I wonder if in the in for navigating
Speaker 1: virtual worlds, what people are going to have to have
Speaker 1: is is not dedicated flat rooms, but a combination of
Speaker 1: the omnidirectional treadmill paired at the same time with a
Speaker 1: sort of actuated version of those coffee table art pieces
Speaker 1: people have where they've got all the pins in them,
Speaker 1: and you can create a three D contour of your
Speaker 1: hand by sticking them under the pins. First time I
Speaker 1: ever encountered that was at the Imagination Pavilion at Epcot. Really,
Speaker 1: I thought it was the most mind breaking thing I'd
Speaker 1: ever seen. I mean, they are pretty cool. I like
Speaker 1: to play with them. Whenever I see one, I'm impressed.
Speaker 1: But anyway, wait, where is it? I used to encounter
Speaker 1: one all the time. I can't remember. For me, it
Speaker 1: was the early eighties when Epcot first opened. I was
Speaker 1: a kid, and I was easily impressed. I think one
Speaker 1: of my friends had one. But anyway, imagine something kind
Speaker 1: of like that. So you're on an omnidirectional treadmill, but
Speaker 1: also under your feet you've got you know, actuated things
Speaker 1: that can rise up in program contours so that you
Speaker 1: can you can climb, you can descend, becoming like the
Speaker 1: mini bots and uh in Big Hero six. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: see what you're saying. Where you've got this um so,
Speaker 1: so it's not just flat, featureless landscape that you're running across,
Speaker 1: but you can you can have elevation uh and and
Speaker 1: encounter that and have it change. Yeah, or I mean
Speaker 1: another way of doing it would be just a tilt
Speaker 1: like a a tilting omnidirectional uh treadmill, which we're starting
Speaker 1: to get We're starting to get into some pretty complicated
Speaker 1: territory here to have all this work out properly. But
Speaker 1: it is interesting, um you know, and these are these
Speaker 1: are real questions, like at what point do you just say,
Speaker 1: all right, now I'm outside, Yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: too complicated, Let's just build a theme park or uh
Speaker 1: we can we can get away with this minimum amount
Speaker 1: of sensory input and create a really compelling experience because honestly,
Speaker 1: it doesn't take that much to get lost in a
Speaker 1: virtual experience and start to think of it as a
Speaker 1: real experience. What you need is low latency and high agency,
Speaker 1: Like you need to have very little lag between your
Speaker 1: actions and you need to actually be able to enact
Speaker 1: change in your environment. And the more you're able to
Speaker 1: bring down latency and increase agency, the more immersive the
Speaker 1: experience tends to be. And it doesn't matter how high
Speaker 1: fidelity the graphics are at that point, or how many
Speaker 1: different points of feedback you have, um other than you know,
Speaker 1: as long as everything supports what you're doing and doesn't
Speaker 1: detract from it, right, like you wouldn't want to have
Speaker 1: a haptic feedback that that contradicts the other sensory uh
Speaker 1: input that you're receiving. That would that would be detrimental
Speaker 1: to the overall experience. But yeah, this was um a
Speaker 1: fun thing to just explore and and I love the
Speaker 1: idea of utilizing it in a practical sense for space application,
Speaker 1: but also then to see what other potential applications we
Speaker 1: could uh find for it here on Earth. Uh, mostly
Speaker 1: because you know, I like to play with technology. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you saw it, but I put on
Speaker 1: a suit that made you'll feel like a real old person.
Speaker 1: Yeah I I if I didn't like technology, I never
Speaker 1: would have allowed them to strap on that extremely snug outfit.
Speaker 1: So Lauren, thank you for the suggestion. Wish that you
Speaker 1: could have been here to chime in because this was
Speaker 1: a fun one. But we do expect her to be
Speaker 1: back for our next episode and of course, listeners out there,
Speaker 1: if you have any comments, questions, you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future topics, please send them our way our email addresses
Speaker 1: f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or
Speaker 1: drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. On Twitter,
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