Overview of VR Haptic suits
One of the extremely interesting technological innovations in the world of virtual reality (VR) is the VR haptic suit. Gone are the days when you can only connect with the virtual environment by just your spontaneous exclamations.
With VR haptic suits, you can not only sit and play virtual games, but you can also actually connect with and feel the virtual environment.
Decades ago, many could not have thought a VR player can actually feel the effects of touches, shootings, explosions, sword fights, and sounding bass of a VR environment on the body. With haptic suits, virtual reality is given the most real expression ever. Players can actively participate in the VR game.
When you put on the haptic suit, you’ll get to feel on your body any touchings, shootings, etc going on in the game as though you are the actual player in the VR environment. You can play a combat VR game and feel a punch on your jaw when your player in the game is punched. This spurs more thrilling effects on virtual reality games.
The cost of haptic suits varies for each manufacturer. For example, the cost of a Tesla Haptic suit. Currently, the cost of Tesla haptic suits is almost $20,000, while a Valkyrie haptic suit costs $1,500. As the use of haptic suits increases and leading to its increase in circulation, there is a projection that it will become cheaper.
Major Components of a VR Haptic Suit
The major components of VR haptic suits are:
• Sensory-based system: This transfers impulses from the VR environment to the wearer. The sensory system can either be based on ultrasonic feedback, force feedback, vibration, or electrical stimulation. The commonest method is however the vibration method which places vibrating motors on zones subjected to collision.
• Motion capture system: This enhances the accurate location of a wearer in space to track the movements of the limbs and fingers.
• Climate-control system: This creates temperature conditions in the VR environment while also simulating corresponding temperature sensations in the wearer.
Some haptic suits contain straps and are designed to be tightly fitted on the whole body, while some are designed to be worn on specified parts of the body such as fingers.
Popular VR haptic suits
The popular VR haptic suits include the following:
• Rapture Vest
• Synesthesia Suit
• Valkyrie Industries (Iron Man v. 1)
• Dexmo haptic glove
• Go Touch VR
• HaptX
• Tesla Suit
Synesthesia Suit
This suit features 26 actuators that replicate musical vibrations of the VR environment in the wearer through any of the human senses. These actuators are placed in the responsive body parts of the wearer such as shoulders, abdomen, etc to create bodily sensation that matches with the VR game and environment.
It enhances the simulation of a human sense leading to another simulation in a different sense. It features LEDs that enable other people to see the player’s tactile experience. The first Synesthesia Suit was created for the VR video games Infinite.
Valkyrie Industries
The haptic suit created by Valkyrie Industries is referred to as ‘Iron Man v. 1. It’s designed with different external connections visibly clustered together. It also contains various 3D printed pieces that a wearer would attach to his or her various body parts.
It works by using electrical sensory to stimulate a wearer’s muscles, approximating resistance and touch. Currently, it has fully developed the vision and sound perception, while the touch perception is not yet fully developed.
It prides itself as the world’s first active-EKs based wearable that builds muscle faster. The market target of Valkyrie haptic suit is not only limited to VR gaming but also for professional applications.
HaptX
This is made as a glove with microfluidic system that creates an accurate haptic experience. It contains silicon panels and actuators creating simulation on the hand. It has a central control box and tracker too.
It features 133 points of tactile feedback per hand and also has very strong force feedback. It allows wearers to roam through the room-scale VR with lifeline inverse kinematics. It creates a natural simulation in wearers.
The simulation transcends beyond force feedback and vibration. The tactile actuators apply real physical pressure and displace the skin around the land as natural objects would. It exerts almost 40 pounds of force feedback on each hand. It brings industrial-grade haptics and natural interaction to VR for the first time.
A wearer would feel the size, weight, and attributes of objects in the virtual environment. It also features a motion-tracking technology that ascertains the exact location of a wearer in 3D space.
Tesla Suit
You can tightly wear this on your body. It features 68 haptic points with each capable of simulating physical sensations on the wearer’s body. Its use is not only limited to gaming. It can also be used in industries such as rehabilitation centers and athletic training.
It has 3D kinematic motion capture that further enhances the wearer’s interactions in the virtual training environment. It is also characterized with electro-simulation using electrodes to send currents through the skin thereby making some muscular contraction. This neuromuscular simulation is similar to that used for pain relief in medical applications for therapeutic purposes.
It’s designed to offer feedback on the whole body thereby leading to wearers’ significant engagements in the virtual world. It’s also designed as a wire-free haptic suit. This makes it seamless to use. It also has a climate control system that enables a wearer to experience the climatic sensations of the virtual environment.
You can adjust the sensitivity ratio of this haptic suit from gentle to harsh. A gentle sensitivity would create a mild simulation, while a harsh sensitivity would create an intense simulation such as a punch in the jaw.
Dexmo haptic glove
This haptic glove is designed as an exoskeleton with impeccable functionality and design. It’s designed to fully capture the wearer’s hands. It’s also very easy to use, much more as it’s a wireless glove. It has 2.4 GHz wireless modules that enable seamless wireless communication within 5 meters from the dangle.
It’s light-weight, small and also powered by battery. It comes with a 2000mAh battery modules with a six-hour battery life capacity. It weighs 320g. Comparatively to other haptic gloves, it has significantly lower weight.
It has one vibrator on each finger-like part, and two vibrators on the palm of the palm-like part. The finger-like parts release some force feedback in response to the virtual environment by giving sensations of object grabbing. The motors in the finger-like part of the glove can also pull against the wearer’s fingers to give some higher sensations.
When you put on this glove, it naturally creates some friction and you can feel the efficiency on your fingers. It can accurately also capture the wearer’s hand motion. It’s is very safe to use. It has an output monitoring feature that disables any abnormal motor functions. The highest torque output of each finger is also limited to 3kg. cm to avoid any possible injury.
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Go Touch Virtual Reality
This has a very simple mechanical structure. Compact devices are affixed towards the end of the wearer’s fingers which in turn enhances simulation in the fingertips. The simulation creates some sensation similar to pressing the finger on a plain ground or surface. Even though small, it exerts serious force.
Its main focus is to replicate simulation for grabbing and touching effects in the VR environment. You can wear it on more than one finger. While some other haptic suits use rumbling sensation effects such as vibration, the Go touch haptic suit creates life experiences for other aspects of the virtual environment such as grabbing and touching that can’t be effectively simulated by rumbling.
Instead of a mere rumble sensation that might be abstract sometimes, the Go touch creates a real sensation of sharp objects directly running over a wearer’s fingers.
Rapture Vest
This haptic suit is designed based on vibration and transducers. It ensures high-speed performance and fluid gameplay. It has four different haptic feedbacks that create different sensations.
It’s designed to have specified hit locations in the wearer’s body responding to different interactions with the VR environment. It’s highly comfortable to use as it’s not heavy at all.
Conclusion
The impact of these haptic suits on VR cannot be undermined. They have so much spice up the whole thrills and sensations of VR games that they’re now ‘actual reality’. The life-like experience they give is unparalleled. Most of the above haptic suits are not wireless. However, the Dexmo haptic glove is wireless.
Wearers get to experience the nigh-life VR environment in the realest form. Other than for gaming purposes, you can also use these suits in medical centers, and training institutes.
The future of haptic suits is booming. Mores so, the global market of VR is predicted to reach almost 300 Billion US Dollars by 2024. Ultimately, the growing use of VR would necessarily increase the demand for haptic suits.