Nokia Applies for Skin-friendly Haptic Notification System

Nokia wants to put phone notification systems in the palm of your hand. Literally. Patent application 20120062371, if the tech media is understanding it correcly, aims to give Nokia a patent over a topical notification system that you put on your skin. The first claim of the application states that it would be:

"An apparatus comprising: a material attachable to skin, the material capable of detecting a magnetic field and transferring a perceivable stimulus to the skin, wherein the perceivable stimulus relates to the magnetic field."

Basically meaning that it would look for a signal from a phone and vibrate in response. The tech would be based on ferromagnetic powder which would move when hit with a magnetic field. This could either be painted on or tatooed, as Nokia’s patent application also suggests.

The idea of a magnetic sensing system isn’t new. A few years back, there were a slew of body modification enthusiasts who embedded magnets into the tips of their fingers. Whenever they passed by a magnetic field, they could feel it. It was potent enough that they could tell which electrical wires were live without ever touching them, and whether big box stores like Walmart actually had their security scanners on. Then there’s the research done on haptic technology for extended senses, such as the FeelSpace belt, which used vibrations to give the wearer an artificial sense of direction. The new sense became so well integrated into the person’s psyche that one wearer reported dreaming of North.

Whether this patent application will actually get granted remains to be seen. Even if it does, that doesn’t mean that Nokia plans on using this for anything more than a legal cudgel against potential future innovators. But if Nokia does eventually use this tech... Well, create your own future scenarios.

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