HaptX Wins 1.5 Million NSF Grant to Create Full-Body Haptics for VR
Ready Player One just got a little more real. HaptX – the company behind those frankly terrifying looking haptic gloves you may have seen in tech demos – just scored $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation to develop full-body haptics for virtual reality. Were talking a robotic exoskeleton that lets you feel virtual objects with your entire body, not just your hands. This is the kind of sci-fi nonsense that usually stays in movies but apparently the NSF thinks its worth funding.
According to VentureBeat, the project called ForceBot is a collaboration between HaptX, Virginia Tech, and the University of Florida. The four-year effort aims to create what they claim will be the worlds first full-body haptic and force feedback system for virtual environments. Users would be able to feel the shape, weight, and texture of virtual objects while also experiencing physical constraints on their movement that mimic real-world forces. So if you walk up a virtual hill, youd actually feel resistance in your legs. Thats the dream anyway.
This Isnt Really For Gamers Though
Before you get too excited about finally feeling like youre really in your favorite game, I should mention that consumer entertainment isnt really the primary use case here. The NSF is funding this through their National Robotics Initiative, and the main applications are for improving human-robot interactions. Think remote surgery, hazardous environment work, industrial training – situations where you need to manipulate objects precisely without actually being there physically.
HaptX CEO Jake Rubin says wearers will be able to “intuitively manipulate objects from afar through a robotic avatar” which sounds incredibly cool for things like bomb disposal or underwater construction. A human operator could control a robot in a dangerous location while feeling exactly what the robot is touching. Thats genuinely useful technology that could save lives unlike most VR stuff which is admittedly just entertainment.
The company notes that full-body haptics has “always” been their larger vision beyond just gloves. Theyve been working on this incrementally for years, building “piece by piece” while releasing commercially viable products like their industrial gloves. The NSF grant finally gives them resources to tackle the bigger picture project thats been their goal since founding. AI and robotics research tends to build on itself like this – seemingly small advances eventually enabling much bigger breakthroughs.
What The Tech Actually Involves
ForceBot combines HaptXs microfluidic touch feedback technology with a robotic exoskeleton. Microfluidics basically means tiny channels of air that inflate and deflate to create sensations of pressure and texture on your skin. The exoskeleton part provides resistance and force feedback for larger movements – so you cant just push through a virtual wall because the mechanism physically stops your arm from moving further.
They released an image of a years-old prototype lower-body exoskeleton alongside concept art of what a full system might look like. Its unclear whether the final product will resemble either because this stuff is genuinely hard to engineer and tends to evolve significantly during development. But the basic idea – surrounding your body with actuators that can push back against your movements while simultaneously providing tactile feedback – is sound even if execution is tricky.
Whether any of us regular people will ever use something like this for fun is an open question. Consumer versions would need to be way cheaper, way smaller, and way less intimidating looking than current industrial prototypes. But the research has to start somewhere, and government grants for robotics research have a way of eventually filtering down to consumer products. Your great-grandkids might genuinely live in a Ready Player One world. You probably wont but someone has to build the foundation.
