Insert Jerk Chicken joke here.

Greatest advance in poultry choking ever.


This from Wired.com.

Eggheads Invent Tele-Petting
By Lakshmi Sandhana

02:00 AM May. 17, 2005 PT

Researchers have developed a cybernetic system to allow physical interaction over the internet. The system allows touching and feeling of animals or other humans in real time, but it's first being tried out on -- chickens.

Built by a wacky group of researchers at the Mixed Reality Lab at the National University of Singapore, the Touchy Internet works as follows:

You walk into your office, where a hollow, chicken-shaped doll sits on a mechanical positioning table close to your computer.

The doll whirs to life as soon as you switch on the system, duplicating the motion of a real chicken in the backyard whose movements are being captured by a webcam.

Fondling the doll translates into touching the real fowl.

Touch sensors attached to the doll convey tactile information to a nearby PC through radio signals. The data is sent over the internet to a remote computer near the chicken; the remote computer triggers tiny vibration motors in a lightweight haptic jacket worn by the fowl.

The chicken feels your touch in the exact same place where the replica was stroked.

"This is the first human-poultry interaction system ever developed," said professor Adrian David Cheok, the leader of the team, who has been developing the technology for nearly two years.

"We understand the perceived eccentricity of developing a system for humans to interact with poultry remotely, but this work has a much wider significance," he added.

Promoting the welfare of un-caressed chickens is not the only goal here.

Remote haptic interaction could allow people who are allergic to dogs and cats to caress their pets remotely. Used in zoos, it may allow visitors to pat a lion or scratch a bear. A security officer could remotely and silently signal a dog wearing a haptic suit, giving the animal instructions by simply touching it, which could be useful in rescue work or homeland security applications.

There's also the option of wearing special shoes with electric sensors that receive information about the chicken's leg movements from sensors embedded in the jacket -- you get to feel an electric tingle in your leg every time the chicken takes a step.
…

To disrespectfully abuse Lincoln’s beautiful prose, this story is so perfect as-is that it exists ‘far above my poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what I say here; while it can never forget the greatest leap forward in anonymous remote gratification since the interstate highway rest stop glory hole.’

Yeah, sure, there are lots of cool, real-world application for a haptic technology past remote rat pinching and letting Bubble Boy pet Lassie.

Blah, blah, blah.

But this is such a slow, fat pitch across the middle of the plate that I can’t bear to swing at it. Too cheap. Too easy.

And yet I also can’t shake certain images…

Of James Dobson having a couple of desiccated apricot pits covered in “virtual skin” that he rolls in his palm exactly like Queeg's steel balls in “The Caine Mutiny”…

…and deep within his Senate fastness, Herr Senator Doktor “Heart Breaker and Nine-Lives Taker” Frist winces in pain.


Of the Horse-Fluffer-in-Chief having a very special, sensor-festooned joy-stick set up on his desk -- next to the Nuclear Football -- that he absently fondles when the words get too big and the math gets too hard…

…and somewhere a Clydesdale whinnies in delighted surprise.

Oh, and if you live in Red America, don't worry your pointy, little head one little bit: your non-Activist Christian Evangelical Justice League judges and Small Government Luvin' legislatures will most assuredly leap yet again right into your bedroom to aggressively protect consenting adults from ever, ever, ever being exposed to any of this.