The interest in virtual reality has increased significantly over the last several years, and that is expected to continue at an even greater rate for time to come.
This growth is partially the result of more interest in using it in gaming and similar environments, but another significant factor is how much it is starting to be utilized in B2B-related applications, to help organizations more effectively test products and to even allow individuals to more thoroughly and extensively participate in virtual trade shows.
Amongst the most essential elements of this experience, especially for those wanting to make the most out of it, are VR haptic gloves. They help turn that experience from one that is predominantly visual and auditory to one that is tactile as well. Of course, no touch is actually happening, but these gloves react in a way that causes the user to believe that it is.
What are haptic VR gloves?
Essentially, haptic VR gloves provide users with the ability to feel things, so to speak. They also allow individuals to move those virtual items from one place to another. Seeing their hands move through virtual spaces is another feature.
These activities can be done as the result of the gloves providing several types of feedback:
- Contact feedback is the most basic type. It provides users with the ability to feel the items as well as their sizes and shapes. The touching of virtual surfaces may be done as well.
- Temperature feedback allows users to feel how hot or cold the virtual object or surface is.
- Force feedback results in users being able to get a sense for a virtual substance's density.
- One of the ways that vibrotactile feedback helps enhance this experience is by allowing users to get a sense of what the surface of an object feels like as far as how rough or smooth it is.
- Hand-tracking feedback provides the user with the ability to see their hands move around this virtual area.
How do haptic VR gloves work?
The most notable way in which haptic VR gloves work in allowing you to feel a sensation of grabbing something in a virtual sense is by stiffening, which results in the user feeling a sensation that closely mimics gripping something.
However, these gloves work in many other ways than just that. For example, brakes, in a sense, have been incorporated into them to provide a sense of resistance. This can be useful in situations where difficulty should be experienced in trying to grab or move something. How this is done is through magnetic friction brakes. Some gloves can even provide up to 4 pounds of force on each finger.
What causes these sensations are the actuators that are applied to the gloves. Those are what stiffen to give the user a sense of grabbing something and an ability to feel all of the other related senses.
The gloves also sense how much pressure the user is exerting while determining what type of feedback to provide in order to make this experience as realistic of one as possible.
What are VR haptic gloves used for?
Haptic VR gloves can be used for an ever-increasing variety of tasks. Of course, enhancing gaming activities is perhaps the most known one. However, this list has expended significantly beyond that.
One example that can be applied across a variety of fields is using them to allow individuals to be immersed in situations that mimic real-life ones without the need to have access to physical items and with the removal of any dangerous elements that would have otherwise existed.
Aviation training is one example as these gloves add an essential element to the experience that did not exist before: the ability to touch buttons and other items while engaging in that activity.
Assembly training is another activity that can be trained on with the help of haptic gloves. A significant benefit is not needing to interrupt the regularly operating assembly process while doing so.
Some other examples of activities that can be engaged in at a higher level with the help of these gloves include law enforcement training, healthcare training and marketing activities.
The future
VR haptic gloves have provided another advancement in the VR field that has enhanced the experience for so many, ranging from gamers to those in the medical field practicing for surgeries in virtual settings. They allow users to more fully immerse themselves in these activities and have more meaningful experiences. And the future is bright as they will continue to be improved and enhanced.
Benefits related to these haptic gloves have already expanded to those in B2B, medical and aeronautical situations. Those are expected to continue to expand to other types of scenarios in the years to come as well.