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Tonight on Quantum the final touch
to virtual reality, a phantom arm feeling
its way in cyberspace, genetic links that hold
hope for victims of breast cancer.
We have a gene that we can say, well, this is the cause.
And plans to cash in on a billion dollar crop
with the help of an unlikely ally.
Hello, and welcome to another edition of Quantum.
Also tonight from Western Australia, how science is
helping to catch gold thieves.
But first Geoffrey Burchfield gets
to grips with the latest in virtual reality.
Creating a machine that mimics the human body
is a tough act to follow, but Thomas Massie
isn't a novice at this.
Since the tender age of nine, he's
been building robots out of any spare parts he could find,
even his mother's vacuum cleaner wasn't safe.
By the time he'd left high school in Kentucky,
and headed for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in Boston, he could build an arm that R2-D2 would kill for.
But this is something very special.
You're looking at one of the most remarkable creations
in artificial intelligence.
Thomas calls it, the phantom.
And it's true, there's not much to it, or so it appears.
And yet it's capable of putting you in touch
with your computer in a way, that
until now, seemed impossible.
So throw away the keyboard.
Forget voice recognition, phantom
uses a much more subtle means of communication,
the sense of touch.
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In the space of a few years, virtual reality
has opened new worlds to us.
Wired masks and other contraptions
have allowed us to see and hear things that exist only
in the mind of a computer.
But we've been denied the one sense
that would have made the virtual truly believable.
We couldn't touch those objects and see what they felt like.
Well, now that's changed.
Hey Geoff, pull up a seat.
I think you're going to like this.
OK, I've been really looking forward to this.
What do I do?
Well, just stick your finger in this thimble.
It won't bite.
OK.
The thimble is suspended by a jointed aluminum arm
just above the disc.
At first it's quite lifeless.
OK, I'm ready.
But when Thomas activates it--
Now what?
--and for now he still has to use a keyboard,
it springs into life.
Whoa.
Good grief, it's alive.
I quickly find that although I'm free to move my finger anywhere
I want, if I push down I meet resistance.
It feels as if I have run into a hard, smooth surface.
And then towards the back I hit something.
A wall?
Try moving your finger up here.
I can't move it any further in that direction.
It's because I've programmed a wall there.
Only thing is there's nothing really there.
It feels so solid.
I mean, the amazing thing is I feel
as if I should be able to see this but,
there's nothing there.
Nothing but the phantom.
Now, I know this looks really suspicious.
You're probably sitting there thinking, oh, yeah.
He's just got his finger in a thimble, pushing it around.
Well, yeah.
That is partly true, but there's a lot more to it.
The amazing thing about phantom is
that when I push with my finger the thimble actually pushes
back, like an invisible force field
that I can feel through my finger.
And it's such a powerful sensation
that you can virtually imagine these phantom objects.
Maybe you'll be more convinced by this demonstration.
Now, instead of an invisible wall,
my finger encounters some phantom buttons.
But this time as I touch each button its image
pops up on the screen.
What's more, they actually switch on and off.
And I can feel the click through my fingertip.
Amazing.
If I had my eyes shut I'd swear they were real.
So how does it work?
Fantastic.
How can a computer possibly convey the sensation of touch?
The secret is these black cylinders
on phantom's metal arm.
They look like big hinges, but they're actually
powerful electric motors controlled by the computer.
They're instructed to exert a variable force
on your fingertip.
So when you hit what feels like a wall,
it's really just these motors stopping your finger
from going any further.
There, yeah.
Depending on how the motors are programmed,
it creates the illusion of touching objects
like slippery surfaces, bouncing balls, or what about something
much more complex like living flesh?
There's actually an eye floating here--
Oh.
--looking in this direction.
That's great.
One of the toughest things for anyone wanting to be a surgeon
is getting enough experience.
How do you know what it feels like to make
an incision in a living person without actually operating
on them?
Thomas has already seen a role here for phantom
and has produced a couple of touch and feel simulations.
In this particular program we are
going to recreate the feeling of performing a brain
tumor biopsy.
Oooh.
So I'm going to pick the path for a needle
to go into the patient.
Gosh.
Now you can see on the screen the red represents the needle.
And I'm touching the outer layer, the skin tissue
right now.
And the phantom is resisting me.
And as I apply a force, eventually I'll
overcome a threshold.
Ouch.
And now I've already punctured this layer.
And I will encounter further layers
as I keep pushing the needle into the brain.
The trick here for the surgeon, and what's
so hard to learn sometimes, is how much
pressure to apply before enough is too much.
It's likely that phantom will make its commercial debut
with medical programs like this one.
Subtract A, B, and C and--
Meanwhile Thomas and his colleagues,
led by Ken Salisbury, are well into planning the next stage
of phantom's evolution--
a multi finger version that will allow
you to hold virtual objects.
And that'll bring a world of tactile experiences
within our grasp.
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Imagine, for instance, a collection
of rare and precious objects like this one.
Instead of it being for your eyes only using phantom
you could actually reach out and touch the untouchable.
And it wouldn't even matter if you--
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--accidentally dropped something.
What's more, by storing the feel of those artifacts
within a computer they could be within the reach of anybody
anywhere in the world.
Short [INAUDIBLE].
Without a sense of touch virtual reality
will always remain at arm's length.
That's why phantom has so much potential.
It's bound to make a name for itself.
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