Trying on haptic clothing at the 2022 Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK gave me the chance to immerse myself in VR gaming in a tactile and exciting way: my whole body could touch and feel digital objects as if they were real. It was wild and then with haptic clothing on my hands things got weird.
While trying out the Teslasuit, a full haptic suit that was the most immersive VR headset I've ever worn, I was also able to wear the Teslasuit gloves. Like the full Teslasuit, the Teslasuit gloves are designed to work with the best VR headsets to make experiences more lifelike using haptics.
To do this, it borrows design elements from the Teslasuit. The glove has electrodes placed against each of your fingers that can produce a current from 1mA to 80mA in different patterns to stimulate your muscles and mimic real sensations.
The glove kicks things up a notch with a new trick: Force Feedback, which works in conjunction with its motion tracking capabilities. Using an exoskeleton, the glove can impose a certain mechanical resistance and limit the movements of your finger. When you go to pick up a virtual object, for example an apple, your fingers will not be able to move through the space that the fruit would occupy if you were actually holding it. You are forced to take it.
Additionally, the gauntlet can use its exoskeleton to manipulate the movement of your hands, giving someone else control of your movement.
To get an idea of how force feedback might work, I had to hand a glove to another user while a feature called mirroring was enabled. One of us would be in control at a time and whoever was in charge could move his hand freely; the other person would feel the exoskeleton gently forcing their hand to copy what the controller was doing with theirs.
With this tool, I could force myself to put my thumb up, grab an imaginary water bottle, and shake hands with someone who wasn't there. This kind of technology, while a bit daunting at first, could pave the way for immersive cutscenes from video games or VR movies that let you experience what the protagonist is going through.
For now, though, the Teslasuit gloves are designed with education in mind. CEO Sergei Nossoff explained that one application could be to train new surgeons, allowing them to follow along while an expert performs a complicated operation so recruits can get an idea of what to do next if faced with similar situations.
Listening to this example, it was easy to imagine that the gloves were worn the other way around, where an inexperienced surgeon could be checked by an expert several miles away. Although we are still a bit far from that.
The Teslasuit gloves felt more like a work in progress than the actual Teslasuit, but they were no less exciting. The potential to bring VR objects to life was obvious, and if I ever wear the gloves again, I'd love to play Half-Life Alyx or Resident Evil 4 VR with them on. Or maybe something where the items I pick up aren't that scary, maybe Vacation Simulator.