Novint Technologies, Inc. is a corporation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that designs and builds haptic devices. After several years of designing custom devices for a variety of companies including Lockheed Martin, Chrysler, Chevron, Mobil, Aramco, and Harvard University, Novint released the Novint Falcon -- a mass-market haptic device -- in 2006.
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Novint Technologies, Inc. is a corporation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that designs and builds haptic devices. After several years of designing custom devices for a variety of companies including Lockheed Martin, Chrysler, Chevron, Mobil, Aramco, and Harvard University, Novint released the Novint Falcon -- a mass-market haptic device -- in 2006.
Novint Falcon
Novint's flagship mass-market product is the Novint Falcon, a USB haptic device designed to replace the mouse in video games and other applications. The Falcon is comprised of a ping pong ball-sized spherical grip, connected via three arms to a roughly conical housing, which sits on a weighted base. The housing contains sensors and motors attached to each arm; via triangulation, the sensors can determine where the grip is in three-dimensional space via the arms, and the motors can translate the grip in three-dimensional space via a cable-drive mechanism in order to provide haptic feedback to the user. The grip also has a cluster of four buttons on top of it, and can be easily removed and replaced with other grips, such as a pistol-shaped grip for first person shooters. Currently, none of the available grips are capable of rotating or providing additional actuated feedback. At the flattened point of the Falcon's conical housing is a Novint Falcon logo that lights up in different colors to indicate the state of the device.
Novint Falcon Software
The Falcon is packaged with a disk called Newton's Monkey Business which contains a demonstration program, among other things, presents a variety of textures to interact with using the Falcon. For instance, choosing an ice texture presents a hard, slippery surface to interact with, and selecting molasses presents a viscous, liquid texture with a grainy interior.
The tutorial of the falcon explains the basic usage of the falcon controller by video and after the video by an interactive demo.
Also available as a free download for the Falcon is Haptics Life 2, a Half Life 2 mod in which the mouse controls have been replaced with Falcon controls. As a result, the weight of carried objects and damage dealt to the player's character are conveyed by the controller to the player, and each gun in the game has a different, tangible recoil. Similar mods for other games, such as Doom 3, F.E.A.R., and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars are also available for download.
In addition, there are available beta releases of three games by Valve Corporation: Portal, Half-Life 2 Episode Two, and Team Fortress 2. The new software is available through Valve's Steam content delivery network.
External links
- Novint corporation website
- Video of Novint Falcon demo at CES 2007.
