IBM's Top 5 Innovations For The Future


Bangalore: The Big Blue, IBM makes predictions about five technology innovations every year, which stand to change the way we live next five years. The predictions are based on market and societal trends as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s R&D labs around the world. This year, the focuses is on machines and how they will interestingly imitate the five senses of humans’- Touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell- in 2013.

#5 Touch: Touch and feel through phone screen

Imagine using your Smartphone to shop your wedding dress and being able to feel the satin or silk of the gown, or the lace on the veil, all from the surface of the screen? Or to feel the beading and weave of a blanket made by a local artisan half way around the world? In five years, industries such as retail will be transformed by the ability to “touch” a product through mobile device.

IBM scientists are developing applications for the retail, healthcare and other sectors using haptic, infrared and pressure sensitive technologies to simulate touch, such as the texture and weave of a fabric --as a shopper brushes her finger over the image of the item on a device screen.  Utilizing the vibration capabilities of the phone, every object will have a unique set of vibration patterns that represents the touch experience:  short fast patterns, or longer and stronger strings of vibrations. The vibration pattern will differentiate silk from linen or cotton, helping simulate the physical sensation of actually touching the material.

Current uses of haptic and graphic technology in the gaming industry take the end user into a simulated environment.  This technology will become ubiquitous in our everyday lives, turning mobile phones into tools for natural and intuitive interaction with the world around us.

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