haptx – Page 2 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

January 21, 2020

CES 2020 Interview: HaptX has got the Touch

Haptics was a big thing at CES 2020 earlier this month with bHaptics demoing its Tactsuit system for virtual reality (VR) gamers while Teslasuit announced its new glove prototype – although there wasn’t one to actually demo. One company which has been working in the haptic glove field for some time is HaptX which was at the expo to showcase its new HaptX Development Kit (DK1) as well as discuss its latest collaborations.

HaptX

Unlike other haptic gloves which use a range of mechanical and electromagnetic actuators to simulate the feeling of touch, the HaptX system is the only one to use utilise air via pneumatic actuators and microfluidic air channels. Hence why the gloves look so big and require extensive tubing to a near-silent mini-compressor which supplies the air.

Each glove has 130 microfluidic actuators across the palm, fingers and back of the hand, providing full haptic coverage. Alongside the haptics, HaptX also includes a force-feedback exoskeleton powered by the same microfluidic tech, so users can feel both the texture and physical shape of a digital object.

Naturally, this type of kit is being aimed toward various training use cases with the company demonstrating its recent collaboration with shadow Robot Company and SynTouch. On display was a haptic telerobotic system where the user could operate two robotic arms whilst getting sensory feedback to the extent that she could pick up individual cards. The idea is that no matter where someone is in the world, using HaptX they can operate these arms instinctively.

HaptX

When it came to VR, HaptX had a new demo using an HTC Vive Pro where you could feel raindrops on your hand and other sensations. Take a look at our hands-on from CES 2020 to see what VRFocus thought of the gloves.

Whilst there VRFocus caught up with founder and CEO Jake Rubin to find out what the company has planned for the near future. As development of the DK1 system continues, VRFocus will keep you updated on the latest announcements.

January 20, 2020

CES 2020 Hands-on: Getting to Grips With HaptX

There’s nothing like a bit of haptic feedback to truly make you feel like part of a virtual reality (VR) experience, whether that’s a simple controller shake as you impale an enemy or feel the thump against your chest when you take a hit in experiences like The VOID. Outside of gaming companies are developing new tactile solutions giving users even greater sensory feedback, one of which is HaptX and its microfluidic gloves. On display at CES 2020 recently, the gloves showcased some of the best hand haptics VRFocus has tested yet at the same time one of the fiddliest imaginable.

HaptX The whole idea behind advancing data gloves beyond the confines of simply tracking the hand to a point where they can actually replicate one of the most sensitive and complex areas of the body is digital control. Grabbing an object in digital space has been available for years but actually replicating its shape and texture is another level entirely.

There are several systems either on the market or coming to which aim to solve these solutions, such as Dexmo Enterprise Edition force feedback glove or the recently revealed Teslasuit Glove. Designed for enterprise use, both are focused around force feedback and feeling the presence of an object, with the latter also claiming haptics for texture identification. All entirely contained within a portable, wireless system.

HaptX, on the other hand, wants to turn that sensory stimulation up to 11, with a unique system which works entirely on compressed air. As such compactness and portability are seemingly secondary factors to providing an experience like no other.

HaptX Getting a glimpse of the HaptX Development Kit (DK1) gloves for the first time has that certain wow factor if you’re into prototype tech with a sci-fi flair. The gloves are big (massive in fact), an assortment of metal plates, cables, tubing and fabric that looks unwieldy and highly convoluted to put on (which they are). Not only are they heavy but they both have big pipes going to a mini-compressor to supply the arrays of high-displacement pneumatic actuators with air. The compressor is very quiet as not to disturb whatever work a user might be doing but all of this does mean HaptX really suits slow, methodical actions – can’t imagine a Beat Saber test being conducted!

So does all this equipment and effort actually make for a usable haptic system? Quite frankly yes, yes it does. HaptX partnered the gloves with an HTC Vive Pro and a very basic VR demo involving a farmyard scene. Each glove contains 130 microfluidic actuators and the demoed started off with rain clouds, highlighting how efficient all of these were. The light dappling on the palm was subtle and effective, as close to the real thing as you could imagine.

Other examples of the palm haptics included running both hands over a field of wheat, feeling the individual stems or picking up a small animal which would then wander about, each step reproduced.

The gloves aren’t just about haptics either. Combined with the haptic tech is the force feedback to get a sense of those objects placed within the world. The resistance was sufficient enough to give form to the crates and clouds, offering enough tactile information for natural hand gestures. It was almost a shame that the demo was so basic as it would have been good to try a slightly more complicated process to test the magnetic motion tracking.

Once actually setup in VR the plus points of the HaptX system were plain to see, providing an unrivalled solution for those that want/need maximum hand control and haptic feedback. Yet it’s difficult to see how HaptX plans on making the gloves more user-friendly when its microfluidic system requires a compressor, no matter how ‘mini’ it can be made. The end result is certainly impressive – especially the robot arm demo pictured above – even in this early DK1 stage, just don’t expect to buy one ever!

January 10, 2020

UploadVR CES 2020: Best Of Show And People’s Choice Award

CES 2020 is coming to an end. We’ve been in Las Vegas, NV all week trying out cutting-edge hardware and software demos from companies all over the world trying to push the boundaries of VR and AR technology. As a result, we’ve collected our list of the best and most exciting things we saw for you right here.

Just like we did at E3 2019, we’re giving out two awards: Best of Show and People’s Choice. The Best of Show award winner and its nominees are all selected by UploadVR Editorial staff and the People’s Choice award winner is picked by you, our readers! We looked at our website traffic and social media engagement to determine the four nominees for that award and are using social media polls to pick the winner. This was done across two Facebook polls (Part 1 and Part 2) and a Twitter poll.

And if you want the full rundown on our impressions and all of the top news stories of the week from CES 2020, we chatted about it all live in our VR studio for a special episode of The VR Download this week, embedded above!

UploadVR People’s Choice Award For CES 2020: The Nominees

NVIDIA’s Variable Rate Supersampling

Panasonic VR Glasses

Pimax Artisan VR Headset

Rebuff Reality’s VR Ears and VR Power for Quest

UploadVR People’s Choice Award For CES 2020: The Winner

NVIDIA’s Variable Rate Supersampling

The votes are in and the winner of our People’s Choice Award for CES 2020 is NVIDIA’s new Variable Rate Supersampling feature. Just released this week for RTX GPUs, it will dynamically apply up to 8x supersampling in the center of the view only, the area you usually look at the most in VR, to improve fidelity. It’s sort of like the inverse of foveated rendering, which downgrades the quality of the areas in your peripheral vision to allow for a sharper center.

nvidia ces 2020 peoples choice winner.png

Read more about the new feature here.

panasonic vr glasses ces 2020 best of show nominee

rebuff reality ces 2020 best of show nominee

UploadVR Best Of Show Award For CES 2020: The Nominees

HaptX VR Gloves and Robotic Telepresence

NDI’s Atraxa 6DoF Electromagnetic Tracking

Panasonic’s VR Glasses

Spatial’s Cross-Device Multi-User VR/AR Communication Platform

VRgineers XTAL Dual 4K Military-Grade Headset

Rebuff Reality’s VR Ears and VR Power for Quest

UploadVR Best Of Show Award For CES 2020: The Winner

HaptX VR Gloves and Robotic Telepresence

At CES 2020 the company that impressed us the most in terms of the technology feeling groundbreaking and truly impactful for the future of the VR/AR landscape, was definitely HaptX. Their haptic feedback gloves worked great and the telepresence robot demo was surprisingly articulated. It will be a long time before this technology is consumer-ready, but the future looks bright for haptics (and HaptX) in VR.

For more on HaptX, check out the demo and interview we conducted at CES 2020.

And for more on CES 2020, check out our Coverage Hub or our news roundup to see what you might have missed.

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December 19, 2019

HaptX Secures $12M Financing to Produce Next Generation of Haptic Gloves

HaptX, a producer of haptic VR gloves, today announced it’s secured $12 million in its Series A financing round. The company has additionally signed a strategic partnership with Advanced Input Systems, which the companies say will include shared product development, manufacturing, and go-to-market collaboration.

The series A financing brings the company’s total funding to $19 million. The round included participation from existing investors NetEase and Amit Kapur of Dawn Patrol Ventures, and was joined by new investors Mason Avenue Investments, Taylor Frigon Capital Partners, Upheaval Investments, Votiv Capital, Keiretsu Forum and Keiretsu Capital.

Founded in 2012 (then known as AxonVR), HaptX has been focused on creating haptic gloves for use in VR, training, and robotics. The company has impressed with its HaptX Gloves developer kit, which Road to VR’s Ben Lang called in late 2018 “the most detailed and convincing haptics and force feedback that I’ve tried to date.”

HaptX says the financing will fund the production of the next generation of HaptX Gloves.

“Over the past year, we’ve had dozens of world-class companies successfully pilot our HaptX Gloves Development Kit,” said Jake Rubin, founder and CEO of HaptX. “With this foundational strategic partnership and fresh capital, we’re well positioned to scale up production to meet rapidly growing demand.”

HaptX has previously worked with companies such as Nissan to bring touch to the its virtual vehicle prototypes, Fundamental Surgery to support its gloves in the company’s VR medical training platform, and All Nippon Airways, Tangible Research, and Shadow Robot Company to integrate HaptX into a telepresence robot.

Jeff Bezos also apparently thought the experience was pretty compelling too, as it called it “really impressive” in a recent demo:

“HaptX and Advanced Input Systems are overcoming a long-standing technology gap of seamlessly connecting the physical world to the virtual world,” said Eric Ballew, president of Advanced Input Systems. “The ability of the HaptX solution to provide realistic touch feedback in wearable haptic devices bridges this gap, accelerating the adoption of VR products in enterprise applications.”

Advanced Input Systems has a 40-year history in engineering and manufacturing human-machine-interfaces, which stands to help HaptX navigate to a more public-facing device with finer haptics, better force feedback, and a price they can actually publish; HaptX only offers its gloves currently to vetted companies.

HaptX will be showing off its latest work in haptics at CES in January 2020. We’ll have feet on the ground in Las Vegas, so check back soon for all things AR/VR to come from one of the biggest consumer tech trade shows in the world.

The post HaptX Secures $12M Financing to Produce Next Generation of Haptic Gloves appeared first on Road to VR.

December 19, 2019

HaptX Announces $12 Million Funding Round, Partners With Advanced Input Systems

Haptic glove company HaptX is partnering with Advanced Input Systems as well as announcing a $12 million funding round.

The new financing round will fund the production of next generation HaptX gloves designed for VR and robotics, according to the startup. The investment round includes existing investors like NetEase and Amit Kapur of Dawn Patrol Ventures. New investors include Mason Avenue Investments, Taylor Frigon Capital Partners, Upheaval Investments, Votiv Capital, Keiretsu Forum and Keiretsu Capital. HaptX was founded in 2012 and has raised $19 million so far.

HaptX has offices in San Luis Obispo and Seattle and plans to show off its latest tech at CES in Las Vegas from Jan. 7-10.

Current VR headsets use tracked hand controllers with rudimentary haptic effects to provide touch feedback. Our sense of touch represents an incredibly hard technical problem to simulate in a fully believable fashion. Creating physical resistance across all 10 digits, for example, is a kind of holy grail in VR research. Facebook’s chief VR researcher Michael Abrash believes that by the year 2028 we may have such a device.

“I predict the first time you get to use your hands with haptics in VR it will be as much as a revelation as the first time that you put on a VR headset,” Abrash said at 2018’s Oculus Connect VR developers conference.

HaptX is also partnering with Advanced Input Systems, a Human-Machine Interface company, to collaborate on product development and manufacturing.

We’ll bring you the latest information about HaptX after we check out their latest demos at CES early next month.

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August 16, 2019

Haptic Surgery Platform FundamentalVR Increases Authenticity With Eye-Tracking

FundamentalVR is on a mission to make VR surgery simulation as robust, convincing and efficient as possible. Recently, it made a small but significant step towards that goal with eye-tracking.

Usually when we hear about eye-tracking’s importance to VR, it’s to do with foveated rendering. Eye-tracking as a means of input often feels like an afterthought. But with Fundamental’s platform, which launched commercially earlier this year, it becomes a surprisingly helpful tool.

“The reason we’ve always wanted it is minimizing head movement whilst you’re operating in the real world is really important,” FundamentalVR CEO Richard Vincent tells me. “We track your eye-movement and your surgical sight gaze. Being able to track that with the precision of your eyes as opposed to the movement of your head which is what we’ve been doing so far is just a great step forward.”

When you operate inside FundamentalVR, a virtual window guides you. Interacting with it usually requires you to look up from surgery. Now with HTC’s Vive Pro Eye, though, you can quickly glance at your desired option out of the corner of your eye and then look back. It’s still not as seamless as, say, human interaction in real-life scenarios, but it is indeed a step forward.

It also improves Fundamental’s capabilities as an analytics and assessment platform. Vincent says it allows educators to more clearly identify where users are placing their focus and how to improve on that going forward.

The platform as whole, remains an impressively robust experience. I’ve tried FundamentalVR a few times now. I’m always equally astounded and somewhat grossed-out by how convincing it is. With the pen-shaped controller in hand, which is held by a robotic arm to provide resistance, I trial new features like skin that pushes and bends when I press instruments into it. 3D-printed controllers can be swapped out for specific tasks, too, for enhanced realism.

For Fundamental, though, even this feels preliminary. The team wants to build a versatile platform that works with practically any kind of haptic tech, but it’s at the mercy of those breakthroughs, to some extent. The company’s already integrated support for HaptX gloves, but devices like these are few and far between right now.

“There’s five or six really interesting companies working on haptic technology right now,” Vincent says. “And we’re excited to see them get to robust availability on a global basis at low cost but they’re none of those things right now.”

For now, though, FundamentalVR seems to be expanding in the right areas. This remains one of the best examples of the good VR is doing out there in the world.

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March 16, 2019

Nissan Design Works With Haptx To Bring Realistic Touch To VR Vehicle Design

Nissan Design is collaborating with Haptx to bring a realistic touch to designing cars in virtual reality, the companies announced last week.

Haptx makes VR gloves that have haptic technology, or the sensation of touch, thanks to 130 tiny actuators in the gloves. You can use these gloves to virtually touch things in a VR environment.

Nissan’s designers are using Haptx Gloves to touch and interact with 3D models virtually, enabling immersive design reviews that would previously require costly full-scale physical prototypes.

“We are entering a new era of design, and Nissan is leading the way,” said Joe Michaels, chief revenue officer of Haptx, in a statement. “We’re honored to see Haptx Gloves adopted as a tool by Nissan’s world-class design team. Working together, we can radically enhance the vehicle design process so that automakers can make better decisions, faster.”

Above: Virtual car design

Image Credit: Nissan/Haptx

The announcement comes a day after Haptx announced that it had teamed up with FundamentalVR to create VR gloves that physicians can use in VR surgery.

The auto industry has invested heavily in VR because it promises to reduce the need for physical prototypes, but auto designers hit a hurdle with touch and input. VR controllers lack realistic touch feedback and prevent designers from interacting naturally with their models.

Nissan and Haptx are working together to address these shortcomings. Haptx Gloves let car designers feel their new model as they design it, enabling them to create new iterations rapidly by using haptic prototyping instead of physical prototyping. This innovation has the potential to revolutionize the design process, saving automakers tremendous time and cost.

It takes years between creating the first 3D model to sitting in the driver’s seat of a complete physical prototype. Haptx Gloves can reduce that time from years to days, letting you grip the steering wheel, adjust the volume dial, and feel the click of the glove compartment in VR before the first piece of steel is bent. This type of nuanced interaction allows auto designers to get a better sense of their customer’s experience.

Above: VR car design will be demoed at South X Southwest.

Image Credit: Nissan/Haptx

“Automakers have faced imperfect options in the design process. VR controllers are unnatural and inadequate for realistic feedback, but full-scale physical models are expensive and limited in their utility,” said Jake Rubin, CEO of Haptx, in a statement. “HaptX Gloves address these limitations, enabling auto designers to feel their new vehicle models throughout the design process and allowing for rapid prototyping within VR.”

Nissan is the first automaker in Japan to use Haptx Gloves. Nissan has already made several vehicle designs touchable with Haptx Gloves, including electric cars like the best-selling Nissan Leaf and the Nissan IMs, the luxury sports sedan concept car showcased at NAIAS in January.

Haptx demonstrated the tool publicly for the first time last week at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.

This post by Dean Takahashi originally appeared on VentureBeat.

Tagged with: Haptx

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March 11, 2019

Nissan und HaptX: Partnerschaft zur Optimierung des Autodesigns dank haptischen VR-Handschuhen

Eine neue Kooperation zwischen Automobilhersteller Nissan und VR-Start-up HaptX sorgt für die Integration von haptischen VR-Handschuhen beim Entwicklungsprozess von Automodellen. Der HaptX-Handschuh ermöglicht es, das simulierte Innenleben der Fahrzeuge innerhalb der virtuellen Umgebung händisch auszutesten und dadurch zukünftige Designschritte zu verbessern. Dadurch werden nicht nur Kosten gesenkt, sondern zudem ein realistisches und natürliches virtuelles Arbeitsumfeld geschaffen.

Nissan und HaptX – Partnerschaft zur Optimierung des Autodesigns mit haptischen VR-Handschuhen

Nissan setzt zukünftig auf VR-Technologie zur Verbesserung des Designprozesses in der Autoentwicklung. Dafür kommt der HaptX-VR-Handschuh des gleichnamigen Unternehmens zum Einsatz. Dieser erlaubt es, das Innenleben der Automobile in virtueller 3D-Umgebung unter realistischen Bedingungen auszutesten. So wird Lenkrad, Schalter oder Handschuhfach in der Simulation zum Greifen nahe, wodurch zukünftige Designentscheidungen getroffen werden können.

Dank haptischem Feedback wird dabei sogar ein natürliches Gefühl beim Anfassen der Objekte simuliert. Um dies zu ermöglichen, sind innerhalb des VR-Eingabegeräts diverse Sensoren und über 130 Aktuatoren verbaut. Dabei handelt es sich um kleine Hohlräume, die passend zum simulierten Objekt mit einer Flüssigkeit befüllt werden, um Gegendruck zu erzeugen. Der Einsatz der VR-Technologie in der Autoentwicklung bringt dabei einige Vorteile mit sich, wie die Partner verkünden. So äußert sich Joe Michaels, Chief Revenue Officer von HaptX, optimistisch über die zukünftige Kooperation:

“Wir treten in eine neue Ära des Designs ein, bei der Nissan die Richtung weist. Wir fühlen uns geehrt, dass unser HaptX-Handschuh vom erstklassigen Designteam von Nissan als Werkzeug eingesetzt wird. In Zusammenarbeit können wir den Fahrzeugkonstruktionsprozess radikal verbessern, sodass die Automobilhersteller bessere und schnellere Entscheidungen treffen können.”

Image courtesy: Nissan | HaptX

Zusätzlich ist es dank der VR-Technologie möglich, enorme Ressourcen zu sparen. Durch die Simulation der Fahrzeuge in 3D wird der Bau von physischen Prototypen passé. Ein kosten- und zeitaufwendiger Prozess, der Jahre in Anspruch nehmen kann. Diese Zeitspanne soll nun auf Tage reduziert werden und dadurch zeitgleich ein besseres Endprodukt für die Kunden ermöglichen. So verkündet Jake Rubin, CEO von HaptX:

“Die Automobilhersteller sahen sich im Designprozess mit unvollkommenen Optionen konfrontiert. Herkömmliche VR-Controller sind unnatürlich, unzureichend und bieten kein realistisches Feedback, während physikalische Modelle in Originalgröße sehr teuer und in ihrem Nutzen begrenzt sind. HaptX-Handschuhe gehen auf diese Einschränkungen ein, indem sie es Autodesignern ermöglichen, ihre neuen Fahrzeugmodelle während des gesamten Designprozesses zu spüren und Rapid Prototyping innerhalb der VR zu ermöglichen.”

Laut dem Unternehmen soll die Methode bereits bei der Entwicklung von zwei Nissan-Modellen zum Einsatz gekommen sein. Dazu zählt der Nissan Leaf sowie der Nissan IMs.

(Quelle: HaptX | Video: HaptX YouTube)

Der Beitrag Nissan und HaptX: Partnerschaft zur Optimierung des Autodesigns dank haptischen VR-Handschuhen zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

October 26, 2018

Hands-on: HaptX’s VR Glove is the Closest I’ve Come to Touching the Virtual World

HaptX, a company building a VR glove offering impressively detailed haptic feedback as well as force feedback, is steadily improving. My hands-on with their latest device—which is smaller, lighter, and more comfortable than prior iterations—offered me moments of magic where it felt like my hand was actually interacting with real objects.

Let’s get this out of the way up front: there’s still much room for improvement to HaptX’s haptic force feedback glove. Before technology like this could make its way to consumers, it needs to be much smaller, easier to use, and less expensive. But for now the company is focusing on getting everything right first, and is targeting the less price sensitive enterprise segment to get there. They announced recently that they now leasing dev kits of their VR glove to enterprises who want to experiment with it.

If nothing else, HaptX is a great proof of the importance of taking haptics beyond the simple rumbling mechanisms available in most of today’s VR equipment. The glove can create brief moments where you really feel like you’re touching something that isn’t actually there.

For me this was clearest when doing something seemingly mundane: using my fingers to rotate a cube. I probably did so for a good five or ten minutes, using cubes of various sizes, because I wanted to understand why it felt convincing.

The answer is feedback. It seems obvious, but it’s quite fascinating when you break it down.

I wrote in greater detail about how the HaptX glove works in my first hands-on with the device—but there’s two major pieces that make it capable of those brief moments of magical immersion:

First is haptic feedback, which aims to create subtle sensations of objects touching the user. For this, the HaptX glove uses arrays of micro-pneumatic actuators—effectively grids of little inflatable bladders which can be inflated and deflated quickly and precisely. By using the arrays to press against the palm and fingertips as needed, the glove can create a sense that an object is touching the user.

A look at the micro-pneumatic actuator arrays which are inflated and deflated to create sensations of touch against your skin. | Photo by Road to VR

The second is force feedback, which is about pushing back or inhibiting the user’s movement in the same way that a corresponding physical object would. To this end, the HaptX glove has a mechanical brake on each finger which can prevent the finger from bending any further. For instance, when gripping a baseball, your fingers come in contact with the sides of the ball and are physically stopped by it. The HaptX glove simulates this by stopping your fingers from moving past where the point that they would stop if you were really holding a physical object.

I’ve attempted the same cube spinning interaction with various VR hand-tracking tech (which tracked my hands but offered no haptics or force feedback), and it’s never felt very good. The HaptX glove succeeds here because it provides additional information (feedback) which hand-tracking without haptics cannot provide.

For one, I know when my virtual hand is coming in contact with the virtual object beyond simple visual verification because I can feel it pushing against my finger tips. This means it’s clear to me that the object is responding to me and able to be gripped.

But it’s the force feedback which ultimately seals the deal, because by stopping my fingers at roughly the correct points in space means I can then rely on entirely natural physical manipulations, like subtly rotating the cube with two fingers (the way that you might twist a knob). Without the force feedback, I’d need to make a mock grabbing gesture in order to keep my fingers in the right place (which feels very unnatural), or rely on an unnatural abstracted gesture to make the system understand that I wanted to grip, but then I’d need to figure out new means of manipulating the object with that gesture instead of interacting with the object as if was truly there.

Continued on Page 2 »

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October 6, 2018

Haptx Unveils Haptic Gloves So You Can Feel Things In VR

Haptx has been working on its haptic gloves — which give you a sense of touch in virtual reality — for a few years. Today, the company is launching its Haptx Gloves Development Kit, an industrial-grade product for advanced simulation in virtual reality.

Haptx Gloves wants to empower professional VR users to develop simulations with realistic touch feedback and natural interaction. That’s a long-held dream for virtual reality visionaries who want to duplicate our real-world senses in VR.

While the gloves have obvious applications in VR games, most of the interest so far is coming from industrial and enterprise markets. I used the gloves in a demo with the HTC Vive last week.

In the demo, I wore an HTC Vive headset and put on two gloves that were connected by thick wires to a big computer. The gloves were somewhat heavy on my hands, but they were lighter than they appeared to be, given their size. (I had to put sanitary finger gloves on each hand first.) Then I went into a demo featuring a barn and a farm landscape. I could touch the grains of wheat and feel how each rubbed against my fingers. I touched the clouds and felt rain droplets hit my open hand.

It was creepy when a spider crawled across my hand and I felt it. But it was cute when a fox and sheep did the same thing. Each time I touched something, I felt touch feedback through the gloves. It was surreal. (It was my second time wearing the gloves, as the first time I tried it with only one. This time, the feeling was more fine-grained in terms of sensations.)

Above: Dean Takahashi looks at a spider on his hand, in VR.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

“With Haptx Gloves, leading automotive and aerospace companies can touch and interact with their vehicles before they are built, radically reducing time and cost for design iterations,” said Haptx founder and CEO Jake Rubin, in an interview with GamesBeat. “Industrial and government organizations can deploy virtual training solutions that build real muscle memory, providing a safe, cost-effective, and flexible alternative to live training.”

The kit includes two gloves, each featuring 130 tactile actuators, or little pressure-sensitive motors, that provide realistic touch feedback across the hand and fingertips.

They are built with Haptx’s patented microfluidic technology, which pumps fluid through wires to provide the feedback. Haptx Gloves can deliver powerful force feedback and motion tracking with sub-millimeter precision.

Above: The Haptx team (left to right): Andrew Mitrak, director of marketing; Tyler Hushing, engineer; Jake Rubin, CEO; and Vivian Reed, communications manager.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

“The Haptx Gloves Development Kit provides a new level of haptic fidelity and realism,” said Mary Hamilton, managing director and lead of the Digital Experiences R&D group at Accenture Labs, in a statement. “Accenture is looking forward to seeing how Haptx Gloves will enhance the capabilities of VR for human-machine interaction.”

When combined with a VR headset, the Haptx Gloves can really change human-machine interaction, enabling users to feel countless virtual objects with unprecedented realism, Rubin said.

“Realistic touch is the missing link for truly immersive VR training simulations. Haptx Gloves are the VR device we’ve seen to bridge this gap,” said Peter Morrison, co-CEO of Bohemia Interactive Simulations Group, in a statement. “Bohemia is excited to see how Haptx Gloves will enhance the capabilities of VR for training and simulation.”

“Enterprise customers need far more precision and realism than today’s VR controllers can deliver,” said Joe Michaels, chief revenue officer at Haptx, in a statement. “Realistic touch is the missing link for many enterprise VR applications. Haptx Gloves are the first device to bridge this gap.”

The HaptX Gloves Development Kit makes its worldwide debut October 3, 2018 at the Future of Storytelling Summit in New York City and the GeekWire Summit in Seattle.

Haptx has 35 employees, with offices in Seattle and San Luis Obispo, California.

This post by Dean Takahashi originally appeared on VentureBeat.

Tagged with: Haptx

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