Vibrating rubber cellphones could be the next big thing in mobile
communications,
allowing people to communicate by squishing the phone to transmit
vibrations along
with their spoken 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
do not
want people to know you are 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's Tangible Media Group. "They're either on or
off,"
she says.
But when you grip Chang's 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's
corresponding finger, its strength dependent on how hard you squeeze.
"Vibralanguages"
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 "Morse
code", which
they would repeat back to show they were following what the other person
was saying.
"It was pretty easy to communicate, though we didn't specifically
pre-arrange codes,"
says David Milovich, one of the students who tried out the device.
Chang thinks "vibralanguages" could take off for the same reason as
texting: sometimes people want to communicate something without everyone
nearby knowing what they're saying. "And imagine actually being able to
shake someone's hand when you close a business deal," she says.


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