Touch TV

Touch TV extends the notion of media content production and viewing to include a new sensory modality, the sense of touch. Recent trends in home theatre technologies point to an increasing desire by viewers to feel immersed in the content they are viewing. Touch TV provides a further opportunity to enhance this experience by simulating a physical link between the viewer and the content. By creating a touch-enabled TV remote control and an innovative series of children’s cartoons, “Touching Tales”, designed from the ground up to be felt as well as heard and viewed, we suggest that an interactive viewing experience could be greatly enriched by providing the ability to feel the motion of objects in a seen and even control the movement of these objects, increasing the realism of the interaction. Furthermore, in “Touch Football”, we demonstrate methods for gathering content in realtime via the equivalent of a camera for touch.

Related Publications:

• O’Modhrain, S. & Oakley, I., (2004). “Adding Interactivity: Active Touch in Broadcast Media” in proceedings of the 12th Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environments and Teleoperator Systems, Chicago, Il
• Oakley, I. & O’Modhrain, S., (2003). “Cross-modal perception of motion-based visual-haptic stimuli” presented at the International Multisensory Research Fourm 2003 (IMRF 2003), Hamilton, Canada
• O’Modhrain, S. & Oakley, I., (2003). “Touch TV: Adding Feeling to Broadcast Media” in proceedings of the European Conference on Interactive Television: from Viewers to Actors?, Brighton, UK. Awarded best paper in conference

People:

• Ian Oakley
• Andy Brady
• Cormac Cannon
• Stephen Davies
• Catherine Little
• Andrea Chew
• Sile O’Modhrain