FAST COMPANY: At the 2009 World Haptics Conference last month, Philips demonstrated an intriguing project: An “Emotion Shirt” that simulates the body’s emotional responses. As Paul Lemmens, a cognitive scientist in Philips’s User Experiences group who developed the device, explains, “The vest does not focus on feeling the punches that the movie character gets, but we want people to feel Bruce Lee’s anxiety about whether he will get out alive.” So the vest pulses on the wearer’s skin, sending a wave of shivers up the spine, throbbing at the belly or pounding on the chest, the simulate butterflies in the stomach and a rapidly beating heart.

Kyle Bunch

Partnerships for R/GA Ventures. Raised in California, adopted by Texas. Opinions expressed here are mine and they are fantastic.

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