Every week we hear more and more awesome news regarding virtual reality headsets. This time, I’m going to tell you about the new haptic glove that adds touch to virtual reality headsets!
Researchers at RICE University have created a new sort of glove, a haptic glove, that uses air to inflate bladders located underneath your fingers to offer a more realistic experience – imagine that you can grab a weapon, let’s say a sword, and wield it in a virtual reality game!
“What we’ve made is a glove that uses air to inflate bladders underneath your fingers, so you can hook this up to a video game and when you reach out and grab a virtual object, it feels like you’re actually grabbing that object,” said mechanical engineering student Thor Walker.
The glove wears about 350 grams – it’s more than enough for users to not feel it bothering them.
” We had our own constraints based on testing to determine the amount of perceptible weight that could be strapped to your fingers, arms, legs and limbs — the maximum weight that is perceptible to users — and we came up with 660 grams on the forearm and much less than that on the back of the hand or on the fingers.”, mechanical engineering student Koch Kevin has stated.
The glove is only right-handed at the moment, and being wireless it was designed specifically to be unobtrusive – it’s going to make you forget you’re even wearing a glove.
It’s a good thing that other companies are jumping on the band wagon. Oculus, HTC, Valve, Samsung and Sony are prioritizing on their headsets – offering a one of a kind audio, and visual, experience is their main goal. We’ll most likely see more gear popping up from other developers in the near future.
Virtuix, the company behind the VR treadmill, is sponsoring the whole project with the intent of making it available for commercial use, and not just a prototype discarded on a shelf somewhere at an University.
Virtuix and the haptic glove’s developers have an agreement on not sharing how it was built, and only to offer software support for those who want to create apps, and games to use with the new touch glove.
It’s gotten a cool name too – Hands On Omni Glove. Take a glimpse at the video down below, and see for yourself the magic RICE University students have unleashed upon the world.
