Disney’s new AIREAL might provide a glimpse at an interesting and new user interface design: the capability to produce haptic (touch) sensation in midair. While this sort of technology seems to fit a niche of entertainment–and thus Disney’s interest–it also has some exciting implications for user experience and human machine interface.

About five years ago, touch screens began their rise at a face pace across all consumer electronics and this has since only accelerated. Although the touch screen is provided a more intuitive way to interact with your phone, there has remained one weak point: the screen does not offer the same kind of feel like the physical buttons. Solutions have been presented involving “clicking” surfaces or programmable bubbles across surfaces that could be depressed or deformed, but providing a tactile response is still a ways off.

Although interfaces to control your computer using gestures, such as the Kinect, are widely spread, they also do not give tactile feedback. The objects on the computer screen can be controlled, but you cannot touch them.

Ivan Poupyrev, senior research scientist at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, and his Disney Research, Pittsburgh colleagues, Rajinder Sodhi, Matthew Glisson and Ali Israr have developed a system called AIREAL that when connected to a TV or an iPad allows users to feel objects and textures in the air. The concept is a bit like Kinect or PS4, though the disadvantage of these controls is that you can’t feel anything.

The AIREAL is a small box-like device with five loudspeakers having a diameter of about 5 cm as actuators. These produce a draft that formed by a flexible nozzle, an air ring–like a puff of smoke from cigarette.

The way AIREAL works is that when connected to a device, a small machine with five speakers launches air rings that allow the user to sense objects without having to wear gloves, goggles or other special driver.

“What makes this particularly exciting is that we can create these effects literally out of free air, without the need for people to wear special gloves or vests, hold haptic devices or sit in instrumented chairs,” said Poupyrev. “The technology for creating these effects is scalable and relatively inexpensive, so we can envision using AIREAL to create magical experiences both for large groups of people and for an individual in her living room.”

Sodhi, a Ph.D. student in computer science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the lead researcher for the AIREAL project created controlled puffs of compressed air by varying the intensity, frequency and targeting of the pulses to create real life like impressions.

“One of the big challenges in these games is that you get visual feedback, but you can’t feel anything,” Sodhi said. “A player may think he has successfully smacked a virtual ball that he sees flying toward him, but can’t know for sure if he hit it until he sees the ball bounce away.”

This technology allows you to feel virtual objects using portions of the air. Using a special device, almost all of the details are made using 3D tracking technology.  A special camera tracks movement, then the data are processed, and the point of the object is sent via a puff of air. This contributes to the five drive set around different sides of the body, which harvests air from the surrounding space and moves it through the flexible nozzle.

The aim and intensity of the flow can be changed so that the direction of an air vortex is influenced. This artificially generated turbulence is very stable and can be transported far into the room.

Interacting with smart devices by moving limbs or head/hand movement is becoming a mainstay of modern technology. Oculus Rift has grown to become one of the hottest topics in the gaming industry in the past year, which uses head motion controls to reflect 3D like experience and is all set to change the world of video games.

Earlier, in October last year, Disney Research has introduced a multi-touch screen technology with the ability to identify and distinguish between different users based on the power of the human body. The researchers call this as fingerprinting capacitive technology. The system uses a new technology of Disney Research that can identify the resistance of each deviation from the soil due to a capacitive sensor and special algorithm. The amplitude of this impedance is affected by bone density, body weight, and even clothes. The advantage of capacitive fingerprinting is that users will not need any additional stuff to wear or hold any other device.

For now, the AIREAL demo is a projection of a butterfly that flies and walks around the user’s arm. You can touch the butterfly and the person can feel the butterfly flap its wings.

AIREAL designed primarily for video games just like Kinect do for gamers. However, the technology can be used to control the computer and to achieve the effect of augmented reality. The researcher said one of AIREAL long-term visions is to create complete 3D shapes in the air. Imagine holding out your hand and feeling someone’s face. This will start truly eroding the boundary between real and virtual.

Currently, AIREAL will be on display at the annual conference on Graphics – SIGGRAPH in Anaheim from Sunday to Wednesday this week.