RCA students design phones that turn speech into physical sensations

Royal College of Art students Sandeep Hoonjan and Xianzhi Zhang have designed a pair of devices that allow people to physically experience conversations while apart during the coronavirus lockdown. The project, called Feel the Conversation, comprises two handheld machines that connect to a phone and translate the user’s speech into a series of simple haptic patterns based on their intonation and volume. Innovation design engineering students Hoonjan and Zhang created the devices to connect people who have