Trying out haptic wearables at the 2022 Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in VR games in a tactile and exciting way – my whole body could touch and feel digital objects as if they were real. That was wild and then, with some haptic wearables for my hands, things got weird.
While trying out the Teslasuit – a full-body haptic suit that was the most immersive VR device I’ve ever used – I also got to wear the Teslasuit Gloves. Much like the full-body Teslasuit, the Teslasuit Gloves are designed to work with the best VR headsets to make experiences more real using haptics.
To do this, it borrows elements from the Teslasuit design. The glove has electrodes placed against each of your fingertips that can output a current from 1mA to 80mA in different patterns to stimulate your muscles and mimic real sensations.
The glove kicks things up a level though with a new trick: force feedback, which works in tandem with its motion tracking capabilities. Using an exoskeleton, the glove can impose some mechanical resistance and restrict your finger’s movements. When you go to pick up a virtual object – say an apple – your fingers won’t be able to move into the space the fruit would occupy if you were holding it for real. You are forced to grip around it.
What’s more, the glove can use its exoskeleton to manipulate your hands’ movement, giving control of your motion to someone else.
To get a sense of how force feedback can work, I had to give up one glove to another user while a feature called mirroring was turned on. One of us would be given control at a time and whoever was in charge could move their hand around freely; the other person would feel the exoskeleton gently force their hand to copy whatever the controller was doing with theirs.