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Today's virtual reality product landscape has come to resemble something of a Wild Westward show, with steely eyed robber barons jockeying for position against basement cowboys and almost anyone with aspirations of tech glory. The results accept ranged from the deeply ludicrous to the truly inspired. As we stride into the uncertain mural of 2022, we await back on the strides taken towards immersive VR and see if we tin can't catch the odor of where things are headed in the year ahead.

Since the dawn of virtual reality, there take been those who dreamed of something grander. Phone call it virtual reality on steroids, the Matrix, or simply Reality 2.0. Whatsoever moniker y'all prefer, the idea is the same — to take VR beyond the headset and inject the entire human sensorium into a virtual world. The industry term most often mentioned in this regard is haptics and relates to the sense of bear upon. You could fifty-fifty say the sense of bear upon is even more essential to immersive VR than sound. Enough of folks get by in life without the help of their ears, but few can manage without the sense of touch.

Late in 2022, ExtremeTech reported on one of the early on devices to make a splash in VR haptics – an ultrasonic haptic interface created at the University of Bristol. The technology promised to use ultrasound to create invisible 3D objects that could exist felt, simply not seen. While certainly headline grabbing, several hurdles diviner against ultrasonic haptic ever condign mainstream — not the least which seems to be that it simply doesn't work that well. ExtremeTech's David Cardinal had a chance to examination the device at CES and reported that the sense of touch on produced by the speaker array used in Bristol fashion interface was far from disarming.

What's more than, it's problematic to see how one could ever position enough ultrasonic speakers to let touching objects in 360 degrees. Nigh of the demos of ultrasonic haptics characteristic a small array of speakers the size of a couple table napkins, positioned directly in front of the user. What happens when you want to bear on something behind, beneath, or on top of you? This question was never answered sufficiently to convince me that ultrasonic haptics will ever deliver the kind of sensation required to really be commercially successful. So while ultrasonic haptics may nonetheless become a staple of magic shows and sketchy psychic parlors, I wouldn't hold my breath for such a rig to appear on the shelves at Best Buy whatsoever time presently.

teslasuit

Artists rendering of the Teslasuit, a full torso haptic solution. Prototype credit: Teslasuit

Of far greater promise is the haptic body suit. Already several commercial players have established a beach head in this nascent field, including AxonVR and Teslasuit. While similar in appearance, haptic trunk suits tin can vary widely in the mechanism for delivering the sensation of touch. The Teslasuit resembles a kind of fortified ski garment, and is surprisingly elegant for being the brain child of a Kickstarter team. To provide the hallmark sensation of touch the unit uses neuromuscular stimulation, the same mild localized electrical shocks found in abdominal building devices and physical therapy TENS units. The conform is laced with thin electrically conducting fabric that delivers mild stimulation to necessary body regions when simulating touch in a virtual world.

One of the challenges Teslasuit faces is rallying plenty programmer support around its Software Evolution Kit to provide meaningful applications for its garment. Like and so many gadgets of promise, unless in that location is sufficient software in the wild making utilize of the new tech, the fruit is likely to wither upon the vine.

exoskeleton

The HaptX Exoskeleton aims to provide users with a fully immersive VR experience. Paradigm credit: AxonVR

The Teslasuit's major contest comes from a hungry little startup called AxonVR, whose 25 year old founder Jake Rubin states his goal equally making virtual reality indistinguishable from reality. This is conspicuously large talk from a small shop, merely having recently received a windfall of $five 1000000 in seed funding, AxonVR will accept a chance to evidence it tin can run with the large dogs. Unlike the Teslasuit, the AxonVR haptic body suit uses miniature pneumatic actuators to provide the sensation of touch on across the trunk. While heavier every bit a result, the AxonVR accommodate can evangelize more distinct types of awareness. It does and so by separating the feeling of touch into two types, cutaneous impact and forcefulness feedback. Cutaneous touch consists of localized sensations upon the skin, such as warmth and cold. In the AxonVR system, this is provided through a skintight HaptX garment.

For force feedback, AxonVR takes things a step further. Using a HaptX exoskeleton, it aims to provide the more forceful sensations of touch on that come with say, walking up a flight of stairs or pushing against a large heavy object. To provide such sensation, the simple electrical stimulation of the kind found in the Teslasuit falls well short of the goal. For such situations, much stronger forces are needed, the kind found in pneumatic actuators of the type that power the Phoenix SuitX's industrial and medical exoskeleton used to help paralyzed individuals regain mobility.

Far from being just another take on the haptic bodysuit, the HaptX exoskeleton could be the most ambitious VR device presently in the works. Resembling a giant robotic arm from which a person dangles in space, the exoskeleton enables a person to traverse VR worlds in a manner like to the ungainly hamster ball rigs and omnidirectional treadmills created for the same purpose. On newspaper at least, information technology'south an inspired 2-in-one solution that solves both the effect of forcefulness feedback and the issue of locomotion in one blow. This makes it my choice for the near groundbreaking immersive VR development of 2022, and the one we are virtually likely to be remember in the years alee. Even if AxonVR ultimately fails to make VR indistinguishable from reality, they most certainly will have moved the ball a behemothic step in that management.