Jacket makes movies feelies.

The IEEE (what used to be the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) reports in Spectrum about a strange new entertainment breakthrough that combines neurology, electronics and fashion. Scientists with Philips have designed a jacket that makes movies more moving… by moving:

The jacket contains 64 independently controlled actuators distributed across the arms and torso…..

“We want people to feel Bruce Lee’s anxiety about whether he will get out alive,” says the Philips researcher. The jacket, responding to signals encoded in the DVD or to a program designed to control the jacket on the fly, can do a host of things, such as “causing a shiver to go up the viewer’s spine and creating the feeling of tension in the limbs.” During the fight scene, says Lemmens, the jacket will even create a pulsing on the wearer’s chest to simulate the kung fu master’s elevated heartbeat.

You can read more about the haptics jacket and similar touching technology as presented at World Haptics 2009.

Tags: electrical engineering, electronics, engineering, neurology