Praptic : The Future of Water Filtration and Entertainment
By: Pallas Shen
Tags: Help, Clean Water, Poor, Water

BEYOND the Basics…

Water Filtration 💧

Water filtration is an essential system, which is the reason why one can survive without food for weeks, while without water, they would be dead within days. Around two third of our body is filled with water, and up to 75% for babies. Clearly, we can understand the grave importance of H20.

Let’s get deeper into how Praptic filters water. As mentioned before, though groundwater is usually filtered naturally, Praptic takes extra measures to ensure that all water is clean and safe from any harmful substances. The unclean water that was pumped from the ground is first put into reverse osmosis. To understand what reverse osmosis is, we must first go through what osmosis is. Osmosis is a process in which molecules pass through a semi-permeable membrane from a high concentrated area to a low concentrated area. Reverse Osmosis takes contaminated water and forces it through a semi-permeable membrane, to create clean water. This is the opposite to Osmosis (as the name suggests), the molecules are coming from low concentration to high concentration instead. Although this method is effective in filtering salt, nitrates, limescale, and much more, it is less effective in removing bacteria. Which is why the next step is distillation.

After the newly purified water goes through reverse osmosis, distillation gets rid of the rest of the bacteria left by the previous process. Distillation is a process in which the water is boiled, the evaporation (steam) is captured, then the evaporation condenses back into water, and last but not least, put in a separate container.

Next, the Praptic system transports the water into multiple water dispensers setup nearby for the community as a whole to use. The people can use it for drinking, cooking, washing, or any other necessary uses.

Diagram of Praptic, Drawn by Pallas Shen (me)

Haptic Technology + Virtual Reality 📡

We rely immensely on the feeling of touch, or otherwise know as “haptic” information. To truly connect with your surroundings, you not only have to see where you exactly are, but also feel the texture of each item, person, or building. There are 3 types of haptic devices: graspable, wearable, and touchable. We will only be focusing on the one Praptic will be using, which is the wearable function in the form of gloves. The wearable haptic glove communicates by using vibrations, pressure, and visual simulation from the virtual reality goggles. For example, if you were to touch a pencil in the virtual world, the glove syncs with the virtual reality headset to create pressure or vibration the moment your hand reaches the item. This tricks your brain into thinking that your surroundings are in fact, reality. Haptic technology may seem far off into the future, but in 10 years it will be easily accessible and highly advanced to all. If we continue to expand this ever growing field, haptic technology will be integrated into our daily lives. So let’s continue to push forward one drop at a time.

Praptic uses these two components to allow the user the freedom of exploring famous locations or landmarks. They can feel the texture of the bumpy walls, smooth tiles, polished statue, or anything else, without being physically at that area. This is the true magic of using haptic technology and virtual reality, we can finally give the opportunity for under-priviledged people to travel to places that they thought was impossible to reach in their life time.