Meta, formerly Facebook, on Tuesday showed off a prototype haptic glove designed for AR/VR that it has been developing for the past seven years.

The prototype technology is essentially a glove that can reproduce a variety of sensations in virtual worlds, including texture, pressure, and vibration.

So far, all of the work done on the technology has been done in Meta’s Reality Labs division, and Reality Labs director Sean Keller said in a blog post that he hopes the technology can one day bridge the gap between real and virtual world.

“We use our hands to communicate with others, to learn about the world, and to act within it. We can harness a lifetime of motor learning if we can bring full hand presence to AR and VR. People can touch, feel, and manipulate virtual objects like real objects, all without having to learn a new way to interact with the world,” he said.

The way the haptic glove works is that it is encased in tiny, inflatable plastic motors called actuators. These motors are placed throughout the glove and move in response to certain actions that are performed in a virtual context. This is done by using microfluidics to push air into the actuators.

Facebook hopes these actuators could one day work in conjunction with hand-in-glove tracking technology that lets a computer know precisely where a user’s hand is in a virtual scene, whether and how it’s in contact with a virtual object. his hand. is interacting with the object.

In AR/VR use cases, Meta envisions the glove would act as a controller and provide haptic feedback for a corresponding sensation experienced in a virtual world. For example, a fully developed haptic glove would attempt to convince the wearer that they are feeling the weight of an object by gently pulling on the skin of the wearer’s fingers with actuators to mimic the pull of gravity on a held object in real time.

However, Meta is still a long way from creating a commercial version of the haptic glove, as it is still developing the microfluidic processor that would power the actuators and hand-tracking technology. He’s also trying to figure out how to consistently create realistic haptic interactions and how to make the glove a good fit for all users.

“Some of the technologies needed to deliver believable haptic experiences in virtual and augmented reality don’t exist yet,” Keller said.

“When we started the haptic glove project, we asked ourselves if we could build a mass-producible, affordable consumer device that would allow people to experience any tangible interface anywhere.

“We couldn’t do it, not without inventing new materials, new sensors and actuators, new integration methods and systems, new rendering algorithms, new physics engines, the list goes on. It just wasn’t possible, but we’ve forged a path that’s plausible and could allow us to get there.”

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