At the exhibition, ReachIn demonstrated a system in which a computer monitor is tilted down so that the image appears in a reflective panel. A user, wearing special glasses that display objects three-dimensionally, can manipulate the objects using the stylus. Teneo Computing, of Princeton, Mass., developed dental training software using SensAble's system. Teneo and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine announced in June a plan to build a virtual reality dental training system. Another haptics tool, developed by Virtual Technologies, of Palo Alto, Calif., is CyberGlove, which can simulate the weight and even the basic texture of objects in a virtual environment.
Virtual touch is still in a relatively early stage of development.
He's chasing somebody, and he's sensorially overloaded. All his normal communications are saturated. You can tell him anything, he won't hear. You can show him anything, he won't see. An Air Force researcher, Daniel Repperger, presented the results of a study that showed that in simulated flight tests, the use of haptic interfaces could reduce crash rates by as much as half in some cases.