Holograms. That you can feel.

By Mark Lorenz on September 18th, 2009

American tech nerds need to hang their heads because the Japanese are beating us like Susan Boyle is beating Whitney Houston, if Susan Boyle were Whitney’s crack dealer, and her fists were made of diamonds. The Japanese. Have made progress. On Holograms. That you can touch.

Did you ever watch Star Trek? At least The Next Generation? And they had episodes where Captain Picard went into the Holodeck, and for some reason acted out old crime novels? Ever seen Minority Report? Where people spent all day in the whatever the hell they were called, never mind. That movie sucked. But people touched holographic boobs. And soon, you can too. Maybe not in this life, but in the next one.

Professor Hiroyuki Shinoda and associates at Tokyo University are working on haptic holography, 3-D projections you can actually feel and I bet James Cameron feels like an asshole now. Working 13 years on an epic 3-D movie, when soon you’ll be able to feel icebergs hitting you in the face. By using ultrasonic waves, scientists can create pressure when someone touches a hologram that is projected. User’s hands are tracked by Nintendo Wii controllers. So far, the technology has been used to simulate pretty minute things such as raindrops falling, but soon you’ll be able to hopefully operate light switches and transport hazardous material.