High-Tech Jacket Turns Video Gameplay into a Massage For a Friend

by Jasmin Malik Chua, 01/08/10

Massage Me, wearable technology

Oh your aching back—if only your significant other would throw the same zeal into working out those knots as he (or she) does dodging AK-47s in the latest iteration of Grand Theft Auto. (How many cars are there left to steal, anyway?) Avoid potential domestic altercations with the Massage Me, an electronics-embedded jacket that turns your back into a game controller.

Massage Me, wearable technology

PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT

With soft, flexible buttons that turns any gamer into your personal masseuse, the Massage Me is also an exercise in energy conservation—well, sorta—converting otherwise-wasted gamepad-pounding energy into a tension-releasing experience. “All you need to do is to sit or lay down in front of a video-game player,” according to designers Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson, “and you will be able to enjoy a back massage while the game lasts.”

The best massages come from playing games that require the player to press a lot of buttons and combinations.

Because the buttons register hand movements and interpret them before directing them onto the gaming console as control signals, Massage Me works with just about any existing game. (It’s currently hacked to a PlayStation controller but could be engineered to work with other consoles.)

“The best massages come from playing games that require the player to press a lot of buttons and combinations,” Satomi and Perner-Wilson note. Your mate about to shoot his way out of a drug sting? Two can play at that game.

+ Massage Me

Related Posts

 

4 Responses to “High-Tech Jacket Turns Video Gameplay into a Massage For a Friend”

  1. dagorret says:

    Good “toy”!.

  2. [...] have been waiting for? The good news is, the newly designed flexible video game controller “Massage Me” will do the trick. Simply put on the jacket shape video game controller and ask your kids to [...]

  3. [...] use this product. Sounds very strange and bizarre, but interesting at the same time.   Via Ecouterre Bookmark to Gamer [...]

 

Leave a Reply

NEW USER

Sign me up for weekly Inhabitat updates

CURRENT USERS LOGIN

Lost your password?