Haptic

It’s not always to picture what’s going on while listening to sports on the radio – so spare a thought for vision-impaired people who don’t have options. Now they do: meet the OneCourt, a haptic feedback device that works like braille for sports.

Fluid Reality is offering a cheaper, more lightweight haptic VR glove that doesn’t need to be tethered to bulky backpacks or multitudes of tubing. It’s designed to provide users with a high-resolution VR experience, direct to their fingertips.

SenseGlove has announced the upcoming release of Nova 2, the second generation of its innovative haptic force-feedback glove. The Nova 2 offers a more realistic VR experience and will be the first glove of its type to feature palm feedback.

While technology is making strides in absorbing our eyes and ears in virtual worlds, it’s harder to engage senses like touch. Engineers have now developed WeTac, a thin, wearable electronic "skin" that provides tactile feedback to users in VR and AR.

Haptic feedback can give virtual experiences an extra dimension, but it’s hard to achieve. Tech startup Emerge has now unveiled the Emerge Wave-1, a device that pairs with a VR headset and emits ultrasonic waves that let users feel virtual objects.

Scientists in Australia have demonstrated a new type of haptic feedback device they say offers a more realistic experience than previous solutions, by making use of soft artificial muscles that more closely resemble our sense of touch.

For people who rely on Braille, reading displays and signs in public can be a challenge, but a new system could help. HaptiRead is a haptic feedback device that uses ultrasound pulses in precise patterns to reproduce Braille text in midair.

Haptic feedback is becoming a bigger part of entertainment. Now, a German startup is launching the Feelbelt, which adds the element of touch to games, music, movies, and basically any other device that outputs sound.

​If you're a member of a rowing team, it's not just your stroke that's important, but also how well you coordinate that stroke with those of your team-mates. With that in mind, Idaho-based rowers Mike Schaefer and John Balint invented the connected and collaborative Stroke Master rowing machine.

​We've already seen haptic devices that let you "feel the music," although they've typically just delivered bass vibrations to a particular part of the body. BodyRocks is a little different, in that uses individual "stones" to put a full frequency of vibes wherever users want.

Bosch has been working on haptic throttle pedals that give forced feedback or vibrate to indicate activity that is not conducive to good fuel economy. Now Bosch has attached a fuel-savings number to the technology.​

Tesla Studios recently announced that it has developed a full-body suit that will give the wearer a sensory experience to match the visual experiences now available through virtual reality headsets. Called the Teslasuit, it relies on neuro-muscular electrical stimulation technology.