Virtual reality has been used in video games for over a decade, allowing players to put on goggles and enter worlds that look very different from the one in which they are really standing.
Apple and Meta have embraced these new realities in recent years, offering Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest 3 – goggles that use the latest technologies to provide a better sense of reality and immersion.
However, the feeling of touch in virtual settings has lagged behind the visual and aural aspects of VR, as Carnegie Mellon researchers Craig Schultz and Joe Mullen Bach discovered.
They knew that as long as touch was mimicked using electromechanical means, getting a true sensation of feeling in a VR world would be impossible.
As part of their work in the Future Interface Group at CMU’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, the two decided to employ haptic sensors comprised of fluid to simulate touch.
Schultz and Mullen Bach launched Fluid Reality in Oakland after participating in CMU’s Venture Bridge and the Swartz Center’s Entrepreneur Fellowship Program.
Their haptic sensors, like those on your smartphone or smartwatch, vary to produce feelings of touch, but they’re distinct since they work with liquid rather than mechanical components.
According to Schultz and Mullen Bach, one of the benefits of haptic sensors is their tiny size (-2 millimeters by 2 millimeters against 10 millimeters by 10 millimeters for electromechanical sensors), which allows them to be employed differently.
According to Mullen Bach, employing fluids allows them to be built more cheaply, use less energy, and be placed in vast arrays – numerous fluid sensors can occupy the same space as a single electromagnetic sensor.
Mullen Bach claims that at the Women in Science and Technology Conference in October, “we demonstrated 160 actuators on a hand, which would simply not be possible with conventional technologies.”
“When you’re interacting in VR or AR [augmented reality], the immersion would break apart if you go to touch things,” he said. “If you’re virtually picking something up, you won’t feel it properly.”
He goes on to say that by inserting 32 fluid actuators into each finger of a glove, “when you reach out and touch, we can display the touch on your fingertips.”
According to Mullen Bach, businesses will use Fluid Reality sensors “anytime you have something that is expensive, dangerous, or difficult to get in front of.”
Mullen Bach isn’t sure when his fluid-based haptic actuators will enter the market, but he claims he’s already engaging with potential clients and Pittsburgh-based investors.
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