I’ve shown you VR haptic gloves before that uses vibrations to simulate touch. That works
for some purposes. But these gloves I am going to show you today can do even more.
This is the Senseglove. These gloves not only produce vibrations but also give force feedback,
which allows you to feel the difference between hard and soft materials. This adds another
level of realism. And I’ve tried this out, so in this video,
I’ll explain how it works and what it feels like.
Hello, my name is Cas, and I hope you all had a Merry Christmas!
In today’s DIVE INTO VR video, we will dive into this force feedback glove. Don’t forget
to subscribe if you haven’t yet to see more VR videos like this one.
Now, join me beyond reality. For those who haven’t seen it yet, we showed
you these VR gloves before by ManusVR. You all showed a lot of interest in the video,
and we just wanted to thank you for that.
THANK YOU
In that video, we got a few comments. Smakusdod said
“it would be cool to feel some sensations, but we need to figure out how to electrically
simulate textures, rather than simple vibration”
Just Rein said “It would be much cooler if they come up with a push pull mechanism
of the fingers so if you hold something the fingers lock up so you can’t continue to
close them anymore”
And a few more of these kinds of comments.
Well, today I’m here to show you a glove that might make these wishes come true. Some
of you might have already heard of these kinds of gloves, some of you may not. But here we
go.
This is the Senseglove. They look like exoskeletons for your hands. But they are actually haptic
VR gloves with force feedback. The force feedback is what will allow you to touch and feel virtual
objects like they are really there even though they don’t exist.
But how does it work?
When you touch a virtual object, the force feedback will give resistance. There are haptic
drives in the glove that can put between 0 and 40 Newton of force on each finger. This
is about 0 to 4 kilogram and for the US viewers amongst us, 4 kilogram is about 8.8 pounds.
This makes it possible to create a sensation of both hard and soft materials.
For example, in the demo I tried, which I will show you in just a bit. I could pick
up a soft orange ball, which started at a certain Newton, and the more I squeezed it,
the more resistance the gloves would give. And when I squeezed it to a certain point,
it would jump to 30 Newton, which made the object feel soft. There was also a coffee
cup that should feel harder than a soft ball, so when I picked the cup up, the resistance
jumped to 40 Newton immediately, what made it feel like a hard object.
Next to this, the Senseglove also uses motion capturing to track the fingers. Each joint
of the exoskeleton has a rotational sensor, so 4 per finger, which allows you to measure
20 degrees of freedom in the fingers. And an extra 4 degrees of freedom is measured
by an IMU sensor or by a SteamVR tracker.
The glove also has vibrational motors that is able to create vibrations on each individual
finger.
But unlike the ManusVR gloves we showed before, these gloves are not wireless. There’s a
cable that is connected to the side of the Senseglove that goes to the PC.
Anyway, let’s move on to what this all feels like and if it actually feels real. Here are
my impressions.
Gijs den Butter, the CEO of Senseglove, demoed their development kit to me during VRDays.
The glove I tried had a SteamVR tracker mounted on top.
I tried two different demos. First was a real project that is being used for an awareness
campaign; another demo was to showcase the gloves’ capabilities.
Now, let’s talk about the showcase first. But before we move on, while you are watching
this video, don’t forget to leave a like if you found it interesting so far.
The Senseglove is strapped on top of your hand. Around your palms are a couple of Velcro
hook and loops to keep the glove on your hand. Each finger is strapped on a branch of the
exoskeleton with more Velcro hook and loops.
You can probably already tell where this force resistance is coming from if you look at the
Senseglove. These parts here, and here, pull back your fingers a bit to create the resistance.
Don’t worry, it might look a bit scary, but it isn’t able to pull back your fingers
so far to break them – At least I hope not :P
So in the showcase demo, I had to do some space engineer tasks. After putting on the
Senseglove, I could feel a little bit of resistance straight away. It felt like little shocks
or something. But maybe less dangerous than what I am making
it sound right now :P
I checked the tracking first. My finger movements and the gestures that I made were tracked
pretty accurately. There wasn’t much noticeable latency. Although there should be a little
bit, but since the glove is tethered to the PC, the latency was minimal.
Virtually, there was a desk in front of me, and my first assignment was to get a drill
out of a box.
I could use the drill by pressing the trigger using my index finger. While I pressed it,
I could feel my whole hand vibrate and resistance on my index finger only. The harder I pressed
the trigger, the harder the resistance got, and the more vibrations I felt.
That felt very realistic.
After that, I had to pull a casing out. And my assignment was to replace a broken battery.
I, of course, had to try and touch one of the working batteries to see if I would feel
something. And while poking one, I indeed felt feedback that felt like tiny little shocks.
They got stronger the more I moved my hands towards the battery.
It was interesting.
Gijs then also had me crush the battery, which broke the battery in little glass pieces,
and I felt a strange tingling there. The glove tried to simulate pain to me without it actually
feeling painful, but I could feel that the broken glass was sharp.
After that, I apparently turned the gravity off without knowing, because I had now floating
objects in front of me! One was an orange soft ball that I could squeeze, which we talked
about before in the how does it work section. And yes, it actually did feel soft! And I
could feel the resistance level change the more I squeezed.
Especially comparing it with the coffee cup that felt very hard. Actually, the coffee
cup felt a bit less realistic though, as it felt so hard that it almost felt like a brick
of iron to me.
Interestingly, the force resistance was able to keep me from closing my hands when I was
holding the hard cup. I probably could use more strength to try and breakthrough, but
I didn’t want to break the gloves 😉
But yes, I could indeed feel the difference between soft and hard materials of virtual
objects and I thought it was awesome.
Another demo I tried was a scenario in which users could experience the symptoms of neurological
diseases. This demo was used for a worldwide promotional campaign to create awareness for
Neurobian, which has similar symptoms like Parkinson’s disease.
If you don’t know what that is, in short, it’s a progressive nervous system disorder
that affects movement. For example, it could cause your hands to shake so badly that someone
with Parkinson’s disease can’t do even the most normal every-day-task like holding
a spoon to eat.
So in the awareness demo, these symptoms were simulated. Gijs first had me try the demo
without the symptoms. A table was in front of me with a couple of soft cubes on it. I
was able to stack them and hold them. He then activated the symptoms, and my hands started
shaking uncontrollably. I was still able to hold stuff, but it was hard to stack them.
Gijs then also let me try playing a virtual piano…
It was impossible…
At every single movement I made, I had no control at all. Even when I stopped moving
my hands, my hands would still keep on shaking. Gijs then told me this simulator is also used
to show doctors what it’s like for their patients.
I think it’s a very impactful way to create awareness like this.
So that’s one of the use cases for these gloves. But what else can you use these gloves
for?
Currently, Senseglove is also working with Volkswagen for Virtual Reality training. They
use the Senseglove to train new employees in the car assembly department.
The Senseglove doesn’t always have to be used with VR either. It can also be used for
things like controlling a robot arm from a distance or rehabilitation.
A designer could use the Senseglove to test and evaluate their product even before a prototype
has been made.
While I did not try the Senseglove without VR, I do think that VR could add more to the
realism here. I think my mind played tricks on me too when I used the Senseglove, because
being able to see while feeling probably made it all more intense than it would be without
VR.
So let’s move on to some final thoughts on the Senseglove.
The demos I tried were very cool. It is clear that the Senseglove is meant for researchers
and developers though.
For these gloves to become more suitable for consumers. These kinds of gloves still have
challenges to overcome. For example, these Senseloves are very big and bulky. Some people
don’t find it a comfortable glove either because of the resistance. Plus, it’s tethered,
so not the handiest product for consumers.
And just like with the ManusVR gloves or even Oculus’ hand tracking, it’s hard to use
them with bigger games than tech demos. The simple reason for this is that there isn’t
a way for us to move in a game with these solutions.
When comparing the Senseglove with the Manus VR gloves and Oculus’ hand tracking, it
seems like all three solutions have their pros and cons. Manus VR gloves are wireless,
comfortable, and easy to use, but they don’t have the force feedback that allows you to
feel like the Sense Glove can.
Oculus’ hand tracking is even easier to use than the Manus VR gloves, but hand tracking
like that does not give you any feedback at all. So when you grab a virtual object, you
only grab air in real life, and that can feel weird and immersion breaking. However, Oculus’
hand tracking is the most accessible solution right now because it’s free and integrated
into a stand-alone headset.
The Senseglove is again, unfortunately, for us gamers, a business device at the moment.
It goes for about 3000 euros for one pair of Sensegloves. Not a price us consumers would
pay.
But the Senseglove was one of the most remarkable experiences I’ve tried during VRDays this
year, and I just wanted to share this with you all. I personally think it’s exciting
to discover new VR technology because I still think that everything we see right now, right
here, could become the standard in the future. Maybe not in 5 years, maybe not even in 10
years, but I sure as heck hope that we see an accessible and useful Senseglove-like solution
for the consumer market in 20 years or less.
One fun fact is that Senseglove has told us that they are actually working on a more accessible,
user-friendly glove with force-feedback that you would be able to use with the Oculus Quest
and similar headsets.
That is very exciting to me, and I hope to hear more soon 😉😉
So here we go. What do you think of these VR gloves?
In my previous VR gloves video, I asked for your predictions on when consumer VR gloves
would come to the market. I would love to know if your opinion changed after seeing
this video or that your predictions stay the same.
Put it down below, and let’s have a friendly discussion! 😊
And if you like what you saw, then check out more episodes in this series right here.
A big thanks goes to VR Days for letting us film at their event and Senseglove for showing
off their product.
And a special thanks go to our Right-Hand Patrons. Shout out to artArmin and his Patreon
page. Another shout out goes to BaxornVR and his VR YouTube channel!
Everyone, see you all in the next video.
As always, VR on!