WEBVTT 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:14.029 There are more and less successful uses of touch and haptics in the user interface. 00:00:14.029 --> 00:00:17.845 I'll give a few examples of both. 00:00:17.845 --> 00:00:21.168 Again, I can't imagine most of you won't have a mobile phone, 00:00:21.168 --> 00:00:25.020 probably within reach of you at this moment. 00:00:25.020 --> 00:00:29.466 It obviously uses vibrations alert to say a phone call's coming or you've had a text 00:00:29.466 --> 00:00:33.106 message or WhatsApp message, some sort of notification. 00:00:33.106 --> 00:00:37.291 Also, it's quite likely that as you touch that phone, you might get... 00:00:37.291 --> 00:00:42.770 Some keyboards give you a little vibration back as you click keys. 00:00:42.830 --> 00:00:46.345 I know I've had to turn it off on some of mine, though, because 00:00:46.345 --> 00:00:51.258 if it doesn't get it dead right, it can actually be quite confusing. 00:00:51.258 --> 00:00:54.056 And as I said, certainly 00:00:54.056 --> 00:00:57.651 one of the virtual keyboards  I use on my phone, 00:00:57.651 --> 00:01:01.560 I tried to use it and I've just turned the vibration off.  00:01:01.620 --> 00:01:04.876 But as I said, that can work well or it can work not so well. 00:01:04.876 --> 00:01:11.153 And similarly, there are techniques to give you a sense of texture on phones by using vibration. 00:01:11.153 --> 00:01:17.764 In cars, if you've got some ABS brake control, which again most 00:01:17.764 --> 00:01:20.880 – unless you've got a classic car – probably will have, 00:01:20.880 --> 00:01:24.265 when you press down the brake if the ABS kicks in 00:01:24.265 --> 00:01:28.399 – so if there's a bit of a skid – even the slightest slidy-ness, 00:01:28.399 --> 00:01:33.331 you'll feel a vibration come through your pedal. Now, partly – in early days, 00:01:33.331 --> 00:01:38.075 I think that was actually a physical effect – but nowadays that's not being generated 00:01:38.075 --> 00:01:42.412 by vibration in the car, by the brakes going on and off. But actually is being generated. 00:01:42.412 --> 00:01:47.778 But in order to train people to try and stop just short of that skidding point, 00:01:47.778 --> 00:01:51.525 you put the vibration on, which helps you know when it's happened. 00:01:51.525 --> 00:01:58.298 So that's a really positive use of  deliberate vibration, haptic feedback in the car. 00:01:58.800 --> 00:02:03.172 A slightly less successful one, although still really cool and really nice, was a system 00:02:03.172 --> 00:02:10.758 called iDrive that BMW put into their top-end cars in the mid-2000s. 00:02:10.758 --> 00:02:15.903 And what it did, it was a knob, but it used 00:02:15.903 --> 00:02:20.733 a motor to give a sense of physical movement. So you got this clicky feeling. 00:02:20.733 --> 00:02:24.168 But the number of clicks could depend on what it was about. 00:02:24.168 --> 00:02:29.244 So if you had to... If it was controlling the volume and there was 14 settings to the volume, there 00:02:29.244 --> 00:02:33.410 would be 14 clicks. If you're controlling your menu and there are four items, there would be 00:02:33.410 --> 00:02:36.985 four clicks, and then it would stop. You couldn't go any further.   00:02:37.380 --> 00:02:41.377 Now I'm assuming it was because the technology was early and they couldn't quite get 00:02:41.377 --> 00:02:47.073 it right, and as I said, if you don't get these things right, they're very, very sensitive. 00:02:47.073 --> 00:02:50.692 They actually had to abandon this in a relatively short time. 00:02:50.692 --> 00:02:56.460 And so, later versions actually reverted to having a knob that really does have click stops,   00:02:56.460 --> 00:03:01.101 even though it can't do that thing about  stopping and starting and changing the number.   00:03:01.260 --> 00:03:06.953 It still has haptic feedback. But it's generated  physically rather than digitally. 00:03:08.021 --> 00:03:13.235 A place where haptic feedback is used incredibly successfully is in games. 00:03:13.235 --> 00:03:17.711 Even simple controllers will often have some sort of vibration in them. But you can get 00:03:17.711 --> 00:03:21.774 – if you're a real pro-games player – you'll probably have 00:03:21.774 --> 00:03:25.192 perhaps a steering wheel or force feedback joysticks. 00:03:25.192 --> 00:03:29.743 So as you steer, you actually feel the resistance of the car, 00:03:29.743 --> 00:03:34.113 vibration of the motor, all generated. 00:03:34.113 --> 00:03:38.763 In virtual reality as well. So games – closely related to virtual reality – 00:03:38.763 --> 00:03:42.180 there's been again very positive use of haptics 00:03:42.180 --> 00:03:49.251 for surgery training, because in surgery, it's  really crucial the feel of an instrument as you 00:03:49.251 --> 00:03:54.300 drill or as you cut or as you push.  It's really crucial, surgeons feel   00:03:54.300 --> 00:03:59.027 the difference between different organs. So  as they work, they can tell the difference.   00:04:00.600 --> 00:04:07.012 Slightly coming into technology at the moment,  so something you might see, but probably   00:04:07.080 --> 00:04:14.371 still at the edge of research and into  application, is a thing called *Ultrahaptics*. 00:04:14.371 --> 00:04:19.521 So this could be used in virtual reality. It could also be used in other sorts of settings. 00:04:19.521 --> 00:04:24.639 And it uses ultrasound to give a sense of feeling  in mid-air. 00:04:24.639 --> 00:04:27.935 The idea is you have lots and lots of little ultrasound speakers. 00:04:27.935 --> 00:04:32.549 They generate ultrasound, which creates little points in space 00:04:32.549 --> 00:04:36.000 where they all feed up together and make a big bang. 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:39.929 A bit like if you see waves sometimes come together and make a big splash, 00:04:39.929 --> 00:04:43.260 sometimes they cancel each other out. So you design the splash,   00:04:43.260 --> 00:04:48.772 the sort of splash points to give a sense of  feeling; so, you can have your VR glasses on, 00:04:48.772 --> 00:04:54.838 you might see perhaps a globe in front of you. And as you reach out, you can actually *feel* 00:04:54.838 --> 00:04:59.215 that globe, even though there's nothing  there – it just didn't play now. 00:04:59.520 --> 00:05:04.864 So these things are coming. We've got a change,  both things that are working already, 00:05:04.864 --> 00:05:07.794 but also new technologies that are finding their way through. 00:05:07.794 --> 00:05:13.081 And again, a little bit further down the stream, there's a number of materials 00:05:13.081 --> 00:05:18.765 that change their shape programmatically, currently still very much in research stage. 00:05:18.765 --> 00:05:22.132 But I think it won't be that long maybe, when we start to see 00:05:22.132 --> 00:05:27.482 this kind of thing moving its way  through into different kinds of interactions.