VIBRATING rubber cellphones could be the next big thing in mobile communications, allowing people to emphasise what they鈥檙e saying by squishing the phone to transmit vibrations along with their words. According to a research team at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the idea will make phoning more fun.
Many mobile phones can already be made to vibrate instead of ring when you don鈥檛 want people to know you鈥檙e getting a call. But these vibrations, caused by a motor spinning an eccentric weight inside the device, are too crude for subtle communication, says Angela Chang of the lab鈥檚 Tangible Media Group. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e either on or off,鈥� she says.
But when you grip Chang鈥檚 prototype latex cellphone, your fingers and thumb wrap around five tiny speakers which vibrate against your skin around 250 times per second. Beneath these speakers sit pressure sensors, so you can transmit vibration as well as receiving it. When you squeeze with a finger, a vibration signal is transmitted to your caller鈥檚 corresponding finger, its strength dependent on how hard you squeeze.
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She says that within a few minutes of being given them the phones, students were using the vibration feature to add emphasis to what they were saying or to interrupt the other speaker. Over time, people even began to transmit their own kind of ad hoc 鈥淢orse code鈥�, which they would repeat back to show they were following what the other person was saying. 鈥淚t was pretty easy to communicate, though we didn鈥檛 specifically pre-arrange codes,鈥� says David Milovich, one of the students who tried out the device.
Chang thinks 鈥渧ibralanguages鈥� could take off for the same reason as texting: sometimes people want to communicate something without everyone nearby knowing what they鈥檙e saying. 鈥淎nd imagine actually being able to shake someone鈥檚 hand when you close a business deal,鈥� she says.