Facebook showcases gloves that allow users to feel VR objects
Facebook recently renamed ‘Meta’, won’t just stop with the Oculus or the RayBan smart glasses. With an aim of creating the metaverse, Meta has recently stepped up itself to solely focus on bringing virtual reality (VR) into reality.
The US tech firm has announced that it is creating a haptic glove, a wearable device that would allow users to feel the VR objects they touch and interact with in the metaverse.
“The value of hands to solving the interaction problem in AR and VR is immense,” stated Sean Keller, Facebook Reality Labs research director.
“People could touch, feel and manipulate virtual objects just like real objects – all without having to learn a new way of interacting with the world.”
The haptic glove is meant to be light and flexible on the user’s hand and also capture the user’s movements. The haptic glove is designed to produce “a range of complex, nuanced sensations for the wearer such as pressure, texture and vibration to create the effect of feeling a virtual object with your hands,” stated the company.
“We’re creating almost everything about this discipline from scratch,” Keller stated. “We’re learning how people perceive the sensations of touch and how they complete tasks. We’re figuring out how to fit the whole variety of human hands shapes and sizes, while maintaining mechanical coupling to the user.”
Currently the haptic uses hundreds of tiny actuators to make the user think that they are touching actual objects in the virtual world.
“If you need thousands of tangible forces in different locations at different distances, you either need pneumatics, hydraulics, or high-density electroactive actuators,” stated Tristan Trutna, Reality Labs hardware engineering director.
The latest innovation has been hailed by many tech enthusiasts, but just like many human endeavours there’s got to be a flaw.
Many experts argue that Meta’s latest developments are meant to subtract our physical attraction and also exploit our personal data.
The US tech firm is notoriously known to be selling personal information to the highest bidder despite being used by billions of people across the globe.
Users should always be very cautious of the company’s developments as letting it take control of how we feel things can greatly impact our physical senses.
