Meta’s haptic gloves help you feel objects in the virtual world

Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has unveiled a pair of haptic gloves that lets people feel objects in the virtual world. The Mark Zuckerberg company is gradually drawing us into the metaverse with the ability to experience it with the sense of touch .

The haptic gloves are comfortable and customizable gloves that can reproduce a range of sensations in virtual worlds, including texture, pressure and vibration. The glove is lined with inflatable plastic pads, also known as actuators.

Meta says the “goal is to one day pair the gloves with your VR headset for an immersive experience like playing in a concert or poker game in the metaverse, and eventually they’d work with your AR glasses”

“The value of hands to solving the interaction problem in AR and VR is immense,” explains RL Research Director Sean Keller, who started the team and grew it from one person to hundreds of world-class experts in the span of seven years. “We use our hands to communicate with others, to learn about the world, and to take action within it. We can take advantage of a lifetime of motor learning if we can bring full hand presence into AR and VR. People could touch, feel, and manipulate virtual objects just like real objects — all without having to learn a new way of interacting with the world.”

Keller says that the goal is to invent soft, lightweight haptic gloves that address both sides of the AR/VR interaction problem — helping the computer to accurately understand and reflect the wearer’s hand movements, and reproducing 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. To succeed, these gloves would need to be stylish, comfortable, affordable, durable, and fully customizable.