IEEE Future Directions
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In 2017 we saw Birdly, a VR flying simulator on which you can lay down an feel like a bird flapping its wings over Manhattan or in a tropical jungle. Movement involving your whole body, a fan blowing air in your hair and a VR goggle providing immersive vision all conjures to make you feel like a bird (actually what you think a bird might feel, which is probably not what it feels….). Take a look at the clip.
As you can see in the clip, the equipment is bulky and requires a very specific setting.
Researchers at EPFL took inspiration from Birdly and created a soft exoskeleton you can wear and move around: Flyjacket. The sensors in the exoskeleton detect your movements and can communicate them, wirelessly, to a device, like a drone.
They are demonstrating an application of Fljacket to control a drone. The drone camera is connected to a VR goggle so that you can see what the drone “sees”. By moving your body, flapping your arms, you can control the drone in a way that, according to EPFL researchers is more natural, hence easier, than controlling it using joysticks.
We can expect several soft exoskeletons becoming available in the next decade, some reaching the mass market, sweaters, shirts and gloves that will connect our body to machines achieving a “seamless” interaction with them.
The keyword is “seamless”: if something is seamless it disappears from our perception and we enter into a symbiotic relation, since we take that for granted to the point we are no longer perceiving it.
