((PKG))  HIGH TECH AQUARIUM    
((Banner:  Nature and Technology)) 
((Reporter/Camera: Elizabeth Lee))   
((Adapted by:  Philip Alexiou))  
((Map:  Del Mar, California))
 
((NATS)) 
((Jerry Schubel, President, Aquarium of the Pacific))  
This new wing is called Pacific Visions and the whole idea is 
it focuses on the one animal that is putting all the other 
animals on the planet at risk.  So, it focuses on us.  And 
these big problems, they’re global in scope: climate change, 
habitat destruction and deterioration.   
((NATS)) 
((Jerry Schubel, President, Aquarium of the Pacific))  
It's done with the use of technology and media to tell these 
global stories and to get people involved.  And we want also, 
using technology, to make the wonder, the majesty, the 
beauty of the world ocean and the importance of this story 
accessible to all people.  
((NATS)) 
((Alex Driskill-Smith, President, Ultrahaptics))  
This is a truly leading-edge experience in theater.  There’s a 
bunch of new technology in here, not just the screen itself 
which is 180 degrees surround screen.  There’s a 36-foot 
(10 meter) projection disk at the bottom, which adds to that 
sense of immersion.  
((NATS)) 
((Alex Driskill-Smith, President, Ultrahaptics))  
So, visually you see all these effects surrounding you and 
you feel somewhat completely immersed in that.  And then, 
plus there are a number of other effects.  The seats will 
rumble at appropriate times during the experience.  There 
are strobe light effects.  There’s wind effects, smoke and fog 
effects, and then our technology that also adds this haptic 
effect, the sense of touch for the experience.  And what 
we’re targeting in particular, deaf and blind people, so when 
they come in to experience the film, because they’re going to 
be missing some parts of the film because they are deaf or 
blind, and what we’re trying to do with the midair haptics is to 
deliver that additional sense of touch, to sort of, fill in the 
experience.  
((Alex Driskill-Smith, President, Ultrahaptics))  
Ultrahaptics is the technology that enables you to feel things 
in midair.  You literally put out your hand in free space like 
this, and we project sensations onto your hand using 
ultrasounds.  So, these are sound waves that you can't hear, 
but we project them onto your hand, so you can literally feel 
effects on your hand.  You can feel shapes, control buttons, 
3D objects and even experiences, which is more what we’re 
doing here.  
((Alex Driskill-Smith, President, Ultrahaptics))  
What’s actually happening, it is an array of ultrasonic 
speakers in the device, and these are emitting ultrasound 
waves at slightly different times, each of them, and they're 
calculated to arrive at your hand at a focal point, at a single 
point, that we can then scan across your hand, create 
different shapes on your hand.  
((Alex Driskill-Smith, President, Ultrahaptics))  
There’s a media computer that runs the device and then 
that’s connected through wireless control to the show 
management system.  
((NATS)) 
((Alex Driskill-Smith, President, Ultrahaptics))  
And so, it’s synchronized with all the effects throughout the 
movie.  This is actually the first permanent installation in an 
aquarium or museum or zoo in a film environment.  
((NATS)) 
((Alex Driskill-Smith, President, Ultrahaptics))  
In the future, it will become a consumer device as well as the 
size of the device scales down and the cost as well.  And 
then, you’ll start to see it over the next couple of years in 
consumer devices, in the home, in the office, in the car as 
well.  
((NATS)) 
((Alex Driskill-Smith, President, Ultrahaptics))  
Applications will be around control of various aspects of the 
car, whether it’s the windows or the media player or the 
navigation systems.  You put your hand out, you feel the 
button come to you, and as you depress the button, you feel 
it actuate and you feel this sense of pressing the button and 
getting that feedback that you’ve actuated something, 
whether it’s the playback on the audio or of a movie.  We 
want to put the pieces in place now by incorporating our 
technology into the car, into the office, into the home, even 
into medical environments.  So that when those future 
augmented reality or spatial computing glasses come out in 
a large-scale way, then the haptics is already there in the 
environment, people are familiar with it and we can tie into 
that. 
((NATS))