TIMELINE is an industrial-strength user-input device optimized for media editing applications and for developing novel interaction paradigms (simulation, medical, gaming, VR, etc). It allows for physical, direct manipulation of digital information. For example, an audio editor using TIMELINE can feel the shape of a waveform pass through their fingers; this sensory feedback allows for quickly and confidently performing edits and adjustments.
TIMELINE consists of a linear rail and an ergonomic pincer, both of which are actuated with high-torque motors and equipped with force sensors: an industrial automation construction, but applied to human perception. When you grab TIMELINE, you can pull it back and forth—or it can pull you—and you can pinch, feeling simulated resistance, texture, and feedback. This allows for a tactile conversation between human and computer: a two-dimensional dance between the user's will and a digital world.
Suddenly, your time-series data are within reach.
While advances in capacitive touch, speech recognition, and image/depth sensing have enabled a new wave of fluid interfaces that challenge the mouse/keyboard hegemony, the convenience and portability do not serve everyone. Screens are slippery: touch is an important complement to existing interfaces, and enables completely new forms of digital interaction.
We believe that as our lives become increasingly computer mediated, more research is necessary to enable the incorporation of our bodies into virtual spaces.
TIMELINE is not yet a consumer product, but we have completed a small-run prototype for researchers and developers to evaluate and test potential uses. Unlike other haptic interfaces on the market (Touch 3d Stylus, da Vinci), we provide full API access to a robust hardware interface, along with a variety of compelling sample applications.
We have prototyped five TIMELINE units in Shenzhen, China, and they are distributed in a worldwide network between the United States and Europe.
We are looking for researchers, developers, and venues to work with us on bringing the physical into our increasingly digital lives.
mail@RMOZONE.COM
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