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November 29, 2005
Hugs on the Internet.
I’m amazed at this piece.
Fancy a hug but you're
miles from your loved-one? Well fret not because soon you will be able
to send your squeeze and caress to exactly the part of a person's body
you want via the internet.
That's the hope of Singaporean researcher James Teh, who has developed a "hug suit" for poultry and wants to extend it to humans.
The technology involves the fowl at "home" wearing a wireless, sensor-rigged "jacket" and being tracked by a video camera, Singapore's Straits Times newspaper reported yesterday.
The information is transmitted via the internet to the "office", where the hen's movements appear on the owner's terminal as a 3D model. When the owner touches the model, the instructions are translated into data and then into a series of vibrations emitted by the jacket worn by the hen.
Human-to-human virtual hugging should not be far away, although it took two years of work to get this far, 24-year-old Mr Teh, who works at the island state's Nanyang Technological University, was quoted as saying.
They manage to get all the way through the report without mentioning what it’ll actually be used for. How long before the first spam email asking whether you have such a suit? And would you like to be squeezed by that 18 year old Ukrainian girl you can watch on the webcam?
Actually, anyone want to invest in that idea?
November 29, 2005 in Web/Tech | Permalink
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It won't be a surpise to the average scifi reader that someone has developed a networked "hug suit." Tim Worstall is, though, amazed by what is unsaid :They manage to get all the way through the report without mentioning what it’ll actually be used for... [Read More]
Tracked on Nov 29, 2005 5:29:50 PM
Comments
"And would you like to be squeezed by that 18 year old Ukrainian girl you can watch on the webcam?"
And for her hugs and caresses to be picked up she would also have to be wearing a biosensory feedback suit.
And the thrill in watching a young sexy woman wearing such a suit is what precisely?
Sometimes Tim, I worry about your tastes.
Posted by: Chris harper | Nov 29, 2005 1:11:38 PM
"And would you like to be squeezed by that 18 year old Ukrainian girl you can watch on the webcam?"
And for her hugs and caresses to be picked up she would also have to be wearing a biosensory feedback suit.
And the thrill in watching a young sexy woman wearing such a suit is what precisely?
Sometimes Tim, I worry about your tastes.
Tim adds: What’s rather more alarming is that it will be the 18 year lods grandmother in the suit while she cavorts for the camera.
Posted by: Chris harper | Nov 29, 2005 1:13:23 PM
"Tim adds: What’s rather more alarming is that it will be the 18 year lods grandmother in the suit while she cavorts for the camera."
Now this isn't funny. The really scary thing is that some of the women I have been squiring and lusting over recently ARE (youngish) grannys.
An eighteen year olds granny can be as young as 40. And 40 year old women are YUMMY.
Posted by: Chris harper | Nov 29, 2005 3:56:16 PM
A forty-year-old grandmother of an eighteen-year-old? She'd have to have given birth at age eleven to a daughter who then did the same. At twenty-two she'd be a grandmother of an infant, who'd be ready to strap on a biosensory feedback suit and prance alluringly in front of a webcam right around when granny turns forty. Or she could have given birth at ten and given her daughter a break.
Forty seems like a stretch. Now, fifty is no doubt perfectly common these days: Plenty of young ladies give birth at age sixteen. But that might change if you put them all in biosensory feedback suits.
Posted by: P. Froward | Nov 29, 2005 11:25:18 PM
Prof,
You are right. Sigh. Sometimes I think I am losing my ability to count.
Posted by: Chris harper | Nov 30, 2005 9:06:11 AM
