Student and mobile phone designer Fabian Hemmert, an ambitious developer presenting at a Berlin trade show, has announced his current research project: to enable humans to grasp the digital world in a more physical way. Focusing on devices like the iPhone (touch technology) and the Nintendo Wii (digital technology) as his models, Hemmert is aiming his research at expanding the scope of the mobile phone to activate human senses beyond simply sound and vision. He’s targeting three specific research areas for development:
Mass: Human sensitivity to the distribution of weight through an object is something that Hemmert believes can be used in future phone development. He has developed a simplistic example of this using a weight movement system, which allows digital content to be transferred to a physical dimension. This is demonstrated in Hemmert’s presentation through mapping software, with the weight distribution mirroring the movement of a point on a map, and so allowing people to feel some of the information on the map as well as see it. The set up also enables the user to navigate without looking at a mobile device: simply feeling the change in weight distribution is used as a ‘pointer’, instructing the user which way to walk, and enabling them to view the city rather than focus on their phone.
Shape: Using a similar development process, Hemmert has created a system allowing a device to change its shape, another process that can be used to present digital data in a more physical way. Functions for this system include enabling a handset to become thin in the pocket, and then expand when in use. It also allows the phone to adjust shape according to the function, for example becoming tapered to allow easier viewing, or to standing up on its end on a table without requiring an extremely thick handset. Another use Hemmert has found for the shape shifting is to provide users information about off-screen content, with a thicker edge to the handset demonstrating that – for example – more information is available off the edge of the map being shown.
‘Life’: Hemmert’s most bizarre twist on future technical developments is in making a mobile phone ‘come to life’. Using a hamster as a model (‘you can feel whether it’s okay in your pocket, you don’t need to check it’), Hemmert has developed a prototype model that both moves and has a heartbeat. Most of the time the phone operates in a slow, ‘relaxed’ way, but the heartbeat and movement become faster in the event of a missed call, or other phone activity, allowing the user to ‘feel’ the difference in the handset. He’s even developed the system so that ‘stroking’ the phone calms it back down to its original heartbeat, allowing a phone to be controlled in the pocket during a meeting.
Hemmert’s basic premise is that mobile phones should be aiming to become more human in the future, as opposed to humans becoming more technologically minded. While some of his developments may struggle to take off as more than novelty items in the modern market, the idea of including shape, weight and even a technical simulation of life in the modern mobile market might well get major developers thinking. As things stand, these features – due to both price and a host of potential reliability issues – remain the thing of labs and sci-fi movies, but we’re certainly intrigued by their potential.
