The web is less than a decade away from offering us some of the same experiences, only on from your mouse. Imagine moving over this article and your mouse actually bumps when you pass over a link, or your mouse simulates the feel of being on ice when you move over an image of a frozen lake. This is called ‘tactile-feedback,’ and is a higher fidelity type of feedback that can offer the feel of fabrics and even the ‘squishyness’ of foam. Perhaps we will also have sites offering a post like this one to a visually-impaired reader via braille, which they could feel right on the mouse.

Companies, like San Jose California based Immersion, are already in production with haptic (that is the correct term for force feedback) applications for the robotics industry. Allowing a robot to ‘feel’ its environment which in turn could spur an entire new generation of robotic helpers; from the production line to the home helper-robot. Samsung has even ventured into the genre with a few force feedback enabled cell phones. With games and applications built for the phones with technology from Immersion, these phones offer rumble-like functionality on the games and tactile sensations on the touch screen. As you move over buttons on the touch screen you feel as if an actual button is sitting there.

On the e-commerce front you can quickly see that fabrics like wool and corduroy would have some strange sensations when translated to the mouse, but those uses would show themselves soon enough. Perhaps a link on a that locks your mouse when you hover over a sponsor? Hmm, I think I might need to call a patent attorney.

Matt

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