Meta's haptic glove will let you touch the metaverse

Gloves like these could one day add to the immersion of VR games and experiences.

VR haptic glove

Meta's haptic glove uses pneumatics to simulate the feeling of touch in VR.

Photo: Meta Reality Labs

In the future, pulling a lever in Vacation Simulator may feel a little more like touching one in real life: Researchers at Meta's Reality Labs have been working on a haptic glove that would add the sensation of touch to augmented and virtual reality experiences, and ultimately make the metaverse more immersive.

Meta has given us some sneak peeks at the gloves in the past, including in patent filings and brief video appearances, but this is the first time the company is sharing more details on the project.

  • Reality Labs researchers have been working on haptic gloves for seven years, and they're not done by a long shot: A blog post published Tuesday outlines that the gloves are part of efforts to build technology "for what our digital worlds will look like in 10 to 15 years."
  • The ultimate goal is to build soft and lightweight gloves that can be used to both track hand movements and provide tactile feedback. "The value of hands to solving the interaction problem in AR and VR is immense," said Reality Labs Research Director Sean Keller. "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."
  • Current prototypes use pneumatic actuators — small motors that use air pressure to provide tactile feedback — in combination with a microfluidic processor, which is a chip that's directly situated on the glove to control the air pressure valves.
  • Reality Labs researchers have also been developing new polymer materials for the glove itself in order to eventually manufacture it at scale.

Meta is not the only company working on this type of haptic glove for VR applications. Notably, HaptX has also been working on a glove that is driven by pneumatics, and is making its devices available to developers for VR and industrial robotics applications.

  • HaptX's glove does show some of the potential of this technology: When I tested an early prototype four years ago, I was able to touch individual flowers in a VR experience, and "feel" objects sliding over my open palm.
  • HaptX's device also shows the current limits of this technology: The startup's glove is fairly rigid and uses a kind of external brace, and needs to be connected to a sizable control box to drive the pneumatics.
  • Much of this could be miniaturized over time, but Meta's researchers acknowledged that VR worlds may never feel 100% real. For instance, a glove may be able to simulate the sensation of touching the top of a virtual table, but it won't prevent hands from passing through the table's surface.

Still, the technology developed for these gloves may have repercussions beyond AR and VR. "While we're focused on building a haptic glove, the breakthroughs we're making in fluidic switching and control — not to mention soft robotics — could lead to radical advances for the medical industry in lab-on-chip diagnostics, microfluidic biochemistry and even wearable and assistive devices," said Reality Labs Research Hardware Engineering Director Tristan Trutna.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins