Tim Szeto from Nanoport Technology will host the Hack Chat on Wednesday, April 7 at noon Pacific.
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Of all our senses, the sense of touch is perhaps the most underappreciated. We understand and accept the tragedy that attends loss of vision or hearing, and the impact on the quality of life resulting from olfactory and gustatory sensations can be severe. But for some reason, we don't give a second thought to our sense of touch, which is indeed strange given that we are literally covered with touch sensors. That's a bit of a shame, since touch can reveal so much about the world around us, and our emotional well-being is so tightly tied to the tactile senses that those deprived of it in infancy can be scarred for life.
Haptics is the technology of tactile feedback, which seeks to leverage the human need for tactile experiences to enrich the experience of dealing with the technological world. Haptic feedback devices are everywhere now, and have gone far beyond the simple off-balance motor used since the days when a pager was a status symbol. To help us sort out what's new in the haptics world, Tim Szeto, founder and CEO of Nanoport Technology, will stop by the Hack Chat. Nanoport is a company on the cutting edge of haptics, so Tim and Nanoport engineer Kyle Skippon will have a wealth of details about what haptics are, where the field is going, and how you can start thinking about making touch a part of your projects.