Varsity-Level Telecommuting
Sometimes, Al Jazeera has the best stories:
“Researchers from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have devised a prototype that allows `touch’ to be transmitted over the internet by way of a vibrating jacket.”
At present, the vibrating jackets are not designed for children or long-distance partners but… chickens?
“A pet fowl, wearing a wireless, sensor-rigged jacket, is captured on camera moving inside its coop. This image is transmitted over the internet to the owner in a different location, who gets to see a model of the chicken moving.”
When the owner touches the model, the jacket reproduces the caress as a “series of vibrations.” And the best part? You don’t even need a high-speed connectionthe equipment only requires four bytes per second.