An origami-inspired haptic ring for VR called OriRing weighs 18 grams and can push back with up to 6.5 N. It senses pressing and sliding forces to render size and stiffness, but itβs still a prototype.
The concept is straightforward enough. The Nintendo DSi runs a small homebrew app which lets you use the stylus to make simple line drawings on the lower touchscreen. These drawings are then trucked out wirelessly as raw touch data via UDP packets, and fed into a Gemini tool which transforms them into animation frames. These are then sent to an iPhone app, which uses ARKit APIs and the phoneβs camera to display the animations embedded into the surrounding environment via augmented reality.
One might question the utility of this project, given that the iPhone itself has a touch screen you can draw on, too. Itβs a fair question, and one without a real answer, beyond the fact that sometimes itβs really fun to play with an old console and do weird things with it. Plus, there just isnβt enough DSi homebrew out in the world. We love to see more.