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A chest-worn device that uses vibration to enhance immersion in a game or movie — created by stealthy Cambridge startup Immerz Inc. — is a finalist for an award by the Consumer Electronics Association.
Immerz’s KOR-fx technology was picked as a finalist in the CEA’s second-annual i-stage competition, which looks at new consumer technology products that are close to coming to market. Immerz is one of eleven i-stage finalists, chosen from hundreds of entries, that will unveil their products for the first time before a live audience at the CEA Industry Forum today in Phoenix, Az., according to a company spokesperson.
Strap a woofer to your chest
The KOR-fx technology works by using the resonance of the chest cavity to create various sensations, such as the thump of a nearby fireworks explosion in a game or movie. In addition to a bigger bang, the device also enhances music listening, by creating the same resonance one gets when watching a live concert.
All of this is based on what Immerz president and CEO Shahriar S. Afshar calls “acousto-haptic” technology. According to Afshar, the KOR-fx delivers nearly imperceptible vibrations to the chest, which activate neural pathways that subconsciously monitor the vibrations of the chest cavity that naturally occur when speaking, laughing or crying.
“What goes on is you have pretty faint vibrations that are delivered to the upper corners of your chest, and depending to the context of the sound you are listening to, the emotions are heightened,” Afshar said.
In addition to Afshar, Immerz’s only other employee at the moment is Louis Deitcher, chief marketing and operations officer, who came on board a few weeks ago. “As we near our launch we will be staffing up,” Deitcher said. “The single most important investment we are going to make is in an engineering group to develop the next version of the KOR-fx product.”
If Immerz, which was founded last year, wins the i-stage competition, it will receive $40,000, a turnkey exhibit at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show and a booth at the trade show CES Unveiled. That amount would be added to the funding the company has already received, an unspecified amount of angel money from high-net-worth individuals, Afshar said.
Immerz plans for a launch of the KOR-fx in the first quarter of next year, according to Afshar and Deitcher. The product is well into beta testing right now, and they are hoping to have a final production design ready to go to their manufacturers in Taiwan and China.
Afshar is a physicist mostly known for what is called the “Afshar experiment” he conducted at Harvard University in 2004 that claimed to show a contradiction in one of the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. Afshar now serves as a visiting research professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Rowan University in New Jersey, but says he is devoting most of his time to developing the KOR-fx technology these days.
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