Tactile Gaming Vest Punches and Slices  “Ouch! That hurt!”  So
exclaimed one user of the University of Pennsylvania’s Tactile
Gaming Vest (TGV) during yesterday’s demos at the IEEE Haptics
Symposium, in Waltham, Mass.   Four solenoid actuators in the
chest and shoulders in front, plus two solenoids in the back,
give you the feeling of a gunshot, says Saurabh Palan, a
graduate student who works on the project. In addition,
vibrating eccentric-mass motors clustered against the shoulder
blades make you feel a slashing effect as you get stabbed from
behind. Currently there is no feedback from your own weapons as
you fire, just from weapons aimed at you.   The solenoids and
shoulder vibrators are controlled by custom electronics and
linked to the game, so if your character gets shot from a
certain direction, the appropriate solenoid “fires.” That makes
it better than, say, laser tag, which makes your whole vest
vibrate but doesn’t give you a hint as to where the shot came
from. In that sense, then, the gaming vest