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Haptic Gloves

Senseglove Nova hands-on: haptic gloves with great comfort

Senseglove Nova, a pair of gloves for virtual reality.

Senseglove Nova

Senseglove is a Dutch company that has been working for a few years in trying to offer force-feedback gloves that are affordable for companies to buy. Force-feedback means that the glove is able to replicate the forces that should be applied by the virtual objects to your hands if the objects were real: for instance, if you are holding a ball in VR, the force-feedback gloves prevent your real fingers from entering inside the virtual ball, because they replicate the physics force that the surface of the ball would exert on your fingers when you push them towards its surface. Or if in VR you are squeezing a rubber ball, force feedback makes sure that you have more difficulty in closing your fingers, because it simulates the resistance of the ball material. Force feedback is usually exerted by strings or motors that pull the fingertips and prevent you from pushing them further from the current position.

The first version of Senseglove (read my review here) was made of a bulky exoskeleton that looked 3D-printed and required a big box connected to a power outlet to work. The second version, called Nova, is the one that Senseglove is selling now and that has been taken to AWE. The company claims that the gloves have been made easier to wear and work also with standalone headsets like the Oculus Quest 2. The price for these gloves is $5000, which while may seem a lot of money, is much less than what all its competitors are asking for, and is also an affordable amount for companies.

I had the opportunity of testing for some minutes the Nova gloves, to verify if these claims are true. Of course, this can’t be an exhaustive review, given the short provided time, but it is a hands-on that anyway can give you a first glimpse of the potentialities of this device.

Senseglove Nova hands-on

Me playing with the gloves on an Oculus Quest 2

I have to thank all the Senseglove team for having been so kind as to establish a demo station for me in the corridors of the Hyatt hotel next to the AWE Convention center. They assembled it on the fly on a sofa just so that I could give you my feedback. One thing that I truly love about this company is the kindness of its people.

The first thing I noticed is that the new case of the gloves is elegant and contains the gloves and all the required accessories in an ordered way. It’s better than the first case, which was cool, but bigger and a bit less fashionable.

Then I had a first look at the gloves: they have a design that is completely different from the first model, it’s quite unbelievable that they are two consecutive products from the same company. The first Senseglove gloves were bulky exoskeletons, while the new Nova models look like big gloves.

senseglove fit — This is the old Senseglove DK1

senseglove nova — This is a picture I’ve taken of the new Senseglove Nova. If you remove the Touch controller and its mount, it is very compact

You have a glove made in fabric with on the back of the hand the battery with the force-feedback circuitry and then on top of it a mount to install trackers or controllers to provide positional tracking to the gloves. In the case of Oculus Quest 2, here is where you put the Oculus Touch controllers to track the gloves in VR. For every finger, then, there are three small square plates, connected with a string: this is the mechanism to provide force feedback. Notice that all the fingers are managed by Senseglove with the exception of the pinky.

The gloves with Oculus Touch on, from another point of view. Here you can also see the big status light

Wearing the first model was a total pain in the a**, and I had to spend some time to learn how to properly wear them without asking for someone to help me. With the new Nova model… well… you just wear the gloves as you do with whatever glove that you wear in the Winter. Then you have to adjust the final part of the fingers of the gloves so that it fits where there are the fingertips by pushing them a bit, you tighten two little straps, and you are done. The improvement in usability has been dramatic.

Maybe the five seconds claim is a bit too much from my experience, but 15 seconds is reasonable

The gloves felt pretty good on my hands, only the fabric material was not totally comfortable for me, it felt slightly rough, but I don’t know if it was this way because these demo gloves had been already used a lot of times and so the fabric had ruined over time. The gloves were quite lightweight, and I could move all my fingers without problems. I don’t know what is the effect of using these gloves after hours of usage, but in my short test, they were totally ok to wear and did not cause irritation to my skin, fatigue, arm strain, or other possible issues. So my experience with their ergonomics is positive.

It was also great to see that the gloves were finally wireless, so I could use them everywhere, and without my hands feeling tethered to something. The fact they are working via Bluetooth and operated via a battery is such a great improvement over the first version and makes them much better to be used.

Senseglove people started for me a demo about assembling a robot piece by piece: I had to grab the various parts of the robots (e.g. the arms, the wheels, etc…) and attach them to it, securing them with some screws. It was a nice demo that served the purpose of showcasing the effectiveness of the force feedback mechanism and also of the vibrational haptic feedback it can give to the fingertips.

When grabbing the various parts of the robots, or the tools to assemble them (an electric screwdriver), the force feedback mechanism tried blocking my fingers so that my hand should assume the shape of the virtual object I was holding. This happened thanks to the strings that were installed on the back of my fingers and that were pulled by a motor so that to counteract the push force of my fingers towards the object.

Look at the strings: the box pulls them when it wants to activate the force feedback

From my tests, force feedback in the Nova works more or less like in the previous Senseglove iteration: the mechanism tries to do its best, but there is still a lot of work to do to make it seem realistic. I mean, it’s cool that the glove tries to block your fingers when you are holding a virtual object, because it increases the immersion, since it is similar to what happens in real life when you are holding a real object. But the reaction of the gloves has a slight lag, plus the position it blocks your fingers at is usually not the correct one for the object you are holding: I mean, if you are holding a planar object, most probably your fingers won’t be totally aligned as it would happen in real life, or maybe they are aligned, but in a position that is wrong and makes you compenetrate the object anyway. As I’ve said, the system tries it best, somewhat works, but most of the times, it doesn’t offer realistic sensations. In my previous review, I told that on the DK1 the positioning of the fingers due to force-feedback worked very well for like 10-20% of times, bad in 30% of times and so-and-so in the remaining ones… I think the statistics are more or less the same… maybe the bad cases now are around 20% and so we have 10% more in the so-and-so stats… but the overall functioning seems similar.

While testing the gloves, I also had the impression that the Nova gloves had less strength than the previous version, and people from the company have confirmed this sensation of mine. They told me that since the previous gloves worked by being connected to the power outlet, while the new ones operate out of a small battery, they could not have the same strength of before. But now the gloves are totally wireless, do not need a complicated setup, and can also work with standalone headsets, so there have been so many advantages that this looked like an acceptable compromise.

Fingers tracking, all provided by the gloves, was usable. It is still not at the level of Ultraleap Gemini, and not even at the one of Oculus Quest tracking, but good enough to be usable. Senseglove told me that they are working on a fingers tracking technology that fuses the data from the gloves with some optical fingers tracking made with the camera of the headset, and this should provide better results. But this will be possible only for headsets that give developers access to camera frames, like the Pico Neo, and not with the other ones, like the Quest. It was also a bit strange that the pinky finger was not considered both for tracking and haptic feedback, because I felt that this omission sometimes broke the magic for me. I think that the future improvements on fingers tracking should lead also to improvements of the force feedback mechanism, because if the engine can detect better where are the fingers in the virtual world, it can also apply force on them in a more realistic way.

senseglove nova review — On the fingertip, there is a mechanism to give you vibrational feedback

I have found the tactile feedback to be a noticeable improvement with regard to the previous version. Senseglove Nova can give you vibrational feedback on your fingertips to make you feel the texture of the object you are touching. This was also available on the first devkit, but this one feels stronger and more nuanced: I’ve found it to be much better. Of course it can’t offer realistic haptic sensations since it is just a vibration, but it is good enough to increase the sense of presence when you are for instance pushing a button in your VR scene and you feel something “touching” the fingertip of your index finger. This sensation plus the force feedback together increase the presence for the user.

was able to complete the demo in a few minutes: the instructions were easy to follow and the feedback of the gloves helped in giving more realism to my interactions.

Final impressions

Senseglove Nova is an overall big improvement with regard to the previous version of Senseglove gloves. The only worsening is that the force feedback is slightly weaker, but there have been huge improvements in comfort, usability, design, and tactile feedback. Being able to use these gloves wirelessly on a Quest has been very cool and I think that with this iteration they are finally usable by every company. Also the price, $5000, is not that much if they can make a company spare money with a more efficient training.

Of course I have to remind you that haptics in VR are still in early stages, so this product is not perfect: the force feedback emulation still needs a lot of work to appear realistic. But those moments when it works well, or where the vibrations on the fingertips are coherent with what you are touching in VR, it feels a bit magical, and make you understand the potential of this technology, that is the one of increasing the realism of the virtual simulation. The purpose of these gloves is to give a decent haptic feedback for an affordable price, and I think that it has been fulfilled. If you want perfect haptics, instead, you have probably to wait some iterations of these devices to start seeing something meaningful to you.

(As a full disclosure: an employee of Senseglove is a Patron of this blog, but this has nothing to do with this article or the opinion expressed here)

Quelle:

Senseglove Nova hands-on: haptic gloves with great comfort

26. November 2021 0 comment

Hardware Knowledge

Meta Shows Research Towards Consumer Force Feedback Haptic Gloves

Meta shared details of its long term research towards haptic gloves with force feedback for VR and AR.

Most VR headsets today come with a pair of tracked hand controllers with basic vibration. Some headsets like Meta’s Quest 2 also support controller-free hand tracking, but the lack of any form of haptic feedback limits its usefulness. Many VR glove startups and crowdfunding campaigns have emerged over the years, but most only provide per-finger vibration. Gloves which actually restrict your fingers in response to a virtual object – called force feedback – currently start at $5000, and that’s actually significantly lower than previous devices.

Meta says its goal is to develop “soft, lightweight, stylish, comfortable, affordable, durable, and customizable” gloves capable of simulating “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”.

The company says this goal requires “groundbreaking developments across many scientific and engineering disciplines” from its Reality Labs research team:

Microfluidic Actuators

To simulate the texture of virtual objects, gloves today use an array of tiny vibration motors. Like with pixels on screens, more motors means a higher fidelity recreation of the feel of virtual objects. Meta says traditional mechanical motors are “too big, expensive, and power-hungry to render realistic haptic sensations”, so four years ago it tasked its researchers to start work on soft, pliable actuators made of “entirely new materials”.

The researchers looked to emerging technologies like the soft materials on prosthetic limbs and microfluidics used in cutting edge medical diagnostics devices. Meta claims they have made breakthroughs in pneumatic actuators using air to create force feedback, and electroactive actuators which change shape or size in an electric field.

“What makes our work different from the broader field of microfluidics in general is that we have this emphasis on making things very lightweight, wearable, and fast”

Meta Shows Research Towards Consumer Force Feedback Haptic Gloves

To control these novel actuators, Meta claims it’s building the world’s first high speed microfluidic processor – “a tiny microfluidic chip on the glove that controls the air flow that moves the actuators, by telling the valves when and how far to open and close” with sub-second latency.

Haptic Rendering

To know which actuators to activate at a given time, highly accurate hand tracking is needed, but so is a system to interpret the shape, texture, weight, and stiffness of the virtual objects you’re currently touching.

The researchers are working on “haptic rendering” algorithms which interface with physics engines (present in game engines) to send the right instructions to the gloves. This entails “modelling the physics of touch” while accommodating the limitations of the hardware and the inability to prevent the user from passing their hands through virtual walls and tables. This, Meta says, requires an advanced understanding of multisensory integration – the science of how your brain merges input from multiple senses to understand the world.

Meta claims VR experiences can exploit multisensory integration with precise timing to trick your brain into experiencing the sensation of holding weight, by “gently pulling on the skin of the wearer’s fingers with the actuators to mimic the tug of gravity” alongside visual and auditory cues.

“Our brains are really good at taking a little bit of haptic signal, a little bit of visual signal, a little bit of auditory signal, and fusing it all together to really feel the sensation and be convinced that there’s an object that exists in your hand”

In future, the researchers envision tools to create haptic materials just as visual and audio content are created for games today.

Smart Textiles & New Manufacturing

Meta wants haptic gloves to be lightweight, soft, and highly durable – not rigid heavy and uncomfortable. Its materials scientists worked on new comfortable and flexible materials “customized at the molecular level to yield new functionalities” – a field called smart textiles.

The researchers are exploring “how to build multiple functions — including conductive, capacitive, and sensing functions — into the same fiber or fabric and enable a much slimmer, more wearable form factor”.

The prototype gloves are currently made using a semi-automated process requiring “skilled engineers and technicians who manufacture the subsystems and assemble the gloves largely by hand”. Producing gloves like this at scale though will require entirely new automated manufacturing techniques, Meta cautions. And ideally, for “maximum haptic precision and comfort”, gloves should be custom manufactured for the buyer’s specific hand shape and size.

Decade-Scale Horizon

Meta describes this research as a “moonshot” currently “casting a vision for what our digital worlds will look like in 10 to 15 years”.

“When we started the haptic glove project, we asked ourselves whether we could build a mass-producible, affordable consumer device that lets people experience any tangible interface anywhere.
We couldn’t do it — not without inventing new materials, new sensors and actuators, new methods of integration and systems, new rendering algorithms, new physics engines, the list goes on. It just wasn’t possible, but we’ve forged a path that is plausible and could allow us to get there.”

In other words, don’t expect this in a product any time soon.

As with most of Meta’s research showcases this is likely intended to attract world class researchers to the Reality Labs team, with the aim of recruiting the people capable of making breakthroughs necessary to one day deliver technologies like these to consumers.

Quelle:

Meta Shows Research Towards Consumer Force Feedback Haptic Gloves

24. November 2021 0 comment

Knowledge Research

Meta’s prototype devices give us a glimpse of the metaverse life

Is your body ready?

Facebook has rebranded itself to Meta, and is fully committed to building a metaverse. To achieve its grand vision, it’ll need to launch multiple groundbreaking devices, controllers, and supporting hardware.

The company has already shown off some concepts and research projects in this area, and some of them are fascinating.

Here’s a list of what we’ve seen so far:

Haptic gloves

In its series of prototype devices, gloves with haptic feedback for VR. These gloves are meant to make you ‘feel’ grabbing an object or running your hand along a surface in the virtual world.

To achieve this, Meta’s engineers have placed newly designed soft actuators. These are soft motors all over the glove that move in concert to generate physical sensations when you’re wearing the gloves.

The gloves also have a microfluid chip to control airflow to move these actuators. Meta says that this tech will create a sensation in your hand based on the virtual object’s texture, weight, and stiffness. So technically, you’ll be able to ‘feel’ differently when you pick up a feather or a metal ball in the virtual world.

The company said its engineers have been working on these gloves for more than seven years, and they’re not ready for consumer release yet.

Project Cambria

One of the key pieces of stepping into the metaverse is a headset. While Facebook already has a popular product in Oculus Quest 2, it has already expressed its intention of releasing a more powerful device.

The new headset, codenamed Project Cambria, will be a high-end device with a matching price tag. Reports have suggested that this might be the rumored Oculus Pro with a powerful processor, high-resolution screen, and improved hand tracking.

Mark Zuckerberg said last month that the firm plans to unveil this headset next year. So thankfully, we don’t have to wait for long.

ReSkin

Meta’s efforts are not just about making us ‘feel’ objects in the virtual world. It’s also working on making robots feel through artificial skin.

The company’s AI division worked with researchers from Carnegie Mellon University to develop a 2-3mm thick tactile sensor named ReSkin.

ReSkin is capable of detecting forces as low as 0.1 newtons from objects that are 1mm wide. This makes it an ideal material for robot hands, tactile gloves, or arm sleeves.

Robot with ReSkin trying to pick up a fruit

This artificial skin relies on magnetic signals instead of an electrical connection so that only detecting electronics have to be near the surface.

Meta said that it costs them around $6 each to produce 100 units, and the price point could get cheaper if the company mass produces it. This makes it easier to replace faulty or worn-out patches.

You can read technical details about ReSkin here.

Wrist-based controllers for AR

VR and MR headsets are the first frontiers of the metaverse, but every company wants to be part of a future that has sleek AR glasses.

Apart from glasses, you will also need some kind of controller to interact with objects in AR. In March, Meta showed off wrist-based bands that detect hand movements.

These concept wrist bands use electromyography (EMG) to detect electric signals generated by wrist movements and translate them into commands.

Initially, this tech will detect gestures such as pinching of fingers and releasing them.

The company claimed that the tech could detect signals even when your fingers have moved a millimeter. That could be useful to develop an algorithm that works just on the intention of the movement.

For example, your AR glasses can project a keyboard on any flat surface, and with the help of the wristbands, it’ll be able to detect all your keystrokes. That sounds fancy.

In its demo, the company highlighted two prototypes named Bellowband and Tasbi (Tactile and Squeeze Bracelet Interface). For Bellowband, it used eight pneumatic bellows to control the air within them and generate haptic sensations.

On the other hand, Tasbi uses six vibrotactile actuators and a unique wrist squeeze mechanism.

Meta tested these bands with different scenarios such as pressing virtual buttons or feeling the texture of different surfaces.

The company also wants to use haptics to give you feedback on the exercises you’re performing, such as pulling a virtual arrow correctly with a virtual bow.

Project Aria

Meta might be gunning for AR supremacy, but its first concept project in the path is rather meek. Last year, it unveiled its wearable glasses under the codename Project Aria.

This year, we got to know more about this ‘sensor platform,’ thanks to a report by Protocol. These glasses don’t have any head-mounted display. So, no Google Glass type action or AR effects.

In terms of sensors, it has our cameras and three buttons for power, capture, and mute. At best, this looks like a Snap Spectacles competitor.

What’s next

For now, this is all we know about Meta’s device strategy for the metaverse. While some gadgets, such as the Project Cambria headset, might arrive next year, other stuff like haptic gloves might take a few years to hit the market.

The company dedicated a fund of $10 billion earlier this year to develop metaverse hardware and software. So don’t be surprised if we see more of these crazy (or creepy) prototypes soon.

Quelle:

https://thenextweb.com/news/meta-devices-metaverse-prototype-analysis?utm_campaign=Metaverse&utm_content=187925687&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&hss_channel=lcp-11196683

22. November 2021 0 comment

Hardware Knowledge

Making the human touch virtual

Auburn team exploring immersive virtual reality in pharmacy education

A team of investigators at Auburn University is taking an innovative approach to training health care students on disease states and patient education by engaging in immersive virtual reality experiences.

Led by Kimberly Garza, associate professor in the Harrison School of Pharmacy’s Department of Health Outcomes Research and Policy, the team was recently awarded a Student Learning Through Immersive Virtual Experience grant from Auburn’s Office of Information Technology and the Biggio Center. Titled “Combining Haptics with VR to Support Professional Identity Development in Student Pharmacists through Empathy for Patients,” the project combines virtual reality and haptic devices—mechanical devices that mediate communication between a user and computer—to expose students to various physical limitations patients may experience.

Health care providers and students are knowledgeable about disease states and various physical conditions, but for the most part have never experienced it first-hand. This immersive experience will allow students to feel what it is like to live with certain conditions and have a better understanding of what patients are going through.

“The salience of the patient experience may be greatly enhanced using an immersive technology, such as virtual reality, paired with haptic devices to simulate physical impairments associated with chronic disease,” said Garza. “Virtual reality creates a feeling of actually being there, a feeling that events are actually happening and the feeling that you are actually inhabiting the virtual body.”

The grant supports the purchase of gloves made by the company, TESLASUIT. By wearing the gloves and engaging in a virtual reality simulation, students will feel the physical limitations from a hand and individual finger level of certain conditions. By actually feeling what the experience is like, students can gain empathy for patients with these conditions.

“Empathy for patients among health care providers is a primary component of patient-centered care and is also one mechanism to support professional identity development in health professions students, allowing them to discover their role in addressing patient needs,” said Garza. “Therefore, empathy-building learning activities are critical to the successful development of professional identity among pharmacy students.”

The project will focus on joint immobility in the first iteration with plans to expand to other physical limitations, such as tremor, vision impairment and hearing loss. The glove can help create a realistic feeling of joint immobility by providing forced feedback to make grasping and manipulating objects more difficult.

Students can attempt to carry out various tasks, like opening a pill bottle or using an inhaler wearing the gloves, to experience the hardships their patients might experience. The virtual reality component also adds more visual and auditory input to make the whole experience seem more real.

Collaborating with Garza on the project is a diverse group of faculty and staff, bringing a variety of perspectives to the experience. Others on the team include Gary Hawkins, Chris Loughnane and Adelia Grabowski, Auburn University Libraries; Cheryl Seals and Chad Rose, Samuel Ginn College of Engineering; Brad Wright, Harrison School of Pharmacy; and Michael Grayson, Raymond J. Harbert College of Business, Information Technology.

With funding supporting this project, it opens doors for other applications of virtual reality and haptic devices, including use of a full-body TESLASUIT. Utilizing the technology can help patients and practitioners make informed decisions on disease treatment by experiencing what it is actually like living with the disease.

“In addition to this project, our team is exploring the use of haptics and virtual reality, including a full haptic suit, to simulate disease progression in conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis,” said Garza. “The idea is that we can use virtual reality and haptics in patients who have been newly diagnosed with a disease, like rheumatoid arthritis, to show them how they might expect their condition to progress using various treatment options compared to no treatment.”

Quelle:

https://ocm.auburn.edu/newsroom/news_articles/2021/10/291544-human-touch-virtual.php#.YYPNzY3L_Jo.linkedin

Foto: The TESLASUIT glove will allow Auburn University pharmacy students to experience what it feels like when certain disease states limit the use of a person’s hand. Students will gain empathy for patients with these conditions.

8. November 2021 0 comment

Hardware Knowledge

Manus VR Launches €5000 Haptic Gloves for Enterprise

Manus VR has been making data gloves for virtual reality (VR) for some time now, originally looking at the consumer market before solely focusing on the enterprise sector. While its core gloves offer accurate finger tracking for a range of applications – mainly training – today, Manus VR has expanded its lineup to offer three products, the flagship being the Manus Prime Haptic.

Originally revealed a few months ago, the Manus Prime Haptic gloves are the pinnacle of Manus’ technology, not only providing wireless finger tracking thanks to twelve different sensors that measure hand orientation, thumb orientation and flexion of the knuckle and top joint of each finger, but also haptic feedback for each individual finder.

Manus VR has achieved this by using linear resonant actuators which can provide haptic signals depending on the type of material and how much virtual force is applied. Customers can then customise the haptic feedback depending on their needs, with the user interface featuring an integrated material editor to adjust signal strength, frequency and resonance.

The gloves are compatible with any headset using the SteamVR tracking solution, such as HTC Vive and HTC Vive Pro. While the gloves provide finger tracking, by themselves they can’t be tracked in a 3D space. Hence why Manus VR provides hand mounts and Vive Trackers with each purchase of the Manus Prime Haptic kit, which retails for €4990 EUR.

The core of the product lineup is Manus Prime One. This is the company’s entry-level wireless data glove, with the same finger tracking capabilities has the Manus Prime Haptic, just without the haptic actuators. Manus Prime One retails for €2990 with the kit also supplied with Vive trackers. The gloves also come supplied with plug-ins for Unity and Unreal Engine.

Finally, there’s the Manus Prime Xsens glove. This has been specifically designed for integration into an Xsens motion capture suit, helping complete the hand and finger data on their IMU suits. Manus Prime Xsens retails for €3990, has the plug-ins but no Vive Trackers.

And that completes the lineup. Resellers can be found on Manus VR’s website with only one in North America currently, quite a few in Asia, and several across Europe. For further Manus VR updates, keep reading VRFocus.

Quelle:

https://www-vrfocus-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.vrfocus.com/2019/06/manus-vr-launches-e5000-haptic-gloves-for-enterprise/amp/

5. Juli 2019 0 comment