Tactai Touch

Tactai Touch – Adding The Sense Of Touch To Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality, the next big thing in the tech world, only manages to visually take you to the reel world or a far off place. It has replaced the computer monitor and the mobile phone display screen, nothing more. To enhance the user experience to the next level, to make the wearer feel he/she is truly engaging with the virtual world, it’s important to add the power of touch.

After years of research and a few million dollar investment, Katherine Kuchenbecker and Steven Domenikos, have introduced Tactai Touch – a wearable device that enables touch-based interaction in virtual reality. This compact gadget makes it possible to feel the virtual object that appears on the VR headset. Interestingly, this revolutionary piece of technology is currently priced at only $12.

Tactai Touch Controller – The Extra Large Thimble around the Finger

The Tactai Touch controller has two components – the small finger clip-on available in multiple sizes, one for each finger of the hand, and the large thimble-like equipment to insert your finger. You can use the device on any finger, but all you need is the index finger to experience the sense of touch. One little gadget on one finger is all it takes to deceive the brain and generate the feeling of touch. A single controller is enough for simple activities such as shopping, touching objects, etc. But for more complex stuff like opening a virtual jar or petting a dog would necessitate the use of Tactai Touch on more than one finger.

The Birth of Tactai Touch

The germ of an idea took root in Kuchenbecker’s mind when she received funding from the National Science Foundation to come up with a technology that would allow virtual robots to analyze the surrounding environment and gauge how it would feel to touch, grab, lift, and push the objects and surfaces. In order to achieve the objective, she adopted Haptic Photography – a concept that allowed the capture and recreation of the feeling of touch.

Kuchenbecker has spent years researching this interesting concept. Time and hard work invested into the study of haptic photography has finally paid off. The team at Tactai now has an affordable gadget that will open the sense of touch to wearers of virtual reality headsets.

Tactai Touch Creates a Buzz at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017

Tactai’s first big test came earlier this month. Ericsson, which has teamed up with Tactai, to develop immersive augmented reality and virtual reality experiences, invited the Tactai team to unveil the haptic technology to the audience at CES 2017. Over the period of four days, the Tactai team presented around 500 demos. Some of it was context based presentations, where virtual objects would suddenly turn up in front of the audience.

In one such demo for Ericsson, a virtual room with a television set was created; next to the guest, seated at the center of the living room, was a virtual remote control. On touching the remote, the guests were able to feel the texture of the equipment. They also managed to change channels using the virtual controller. To make the presentation interesting, a virtual blue stuffed bear was placed near the guest. Touching it, the guest found the fur to be soft and smooth.

The presentations seem to strike the right note. Companies across industries wanted to embrace the high-fidelity virtual reality haptic Photography technology. They agreed that adding the feeling of touch is the obvious next step for the virtual reality technology.

The Many Ways Tactai Touch Will Impact Our Lives

Tactai Touch has captured everyone’s attention. Innovators, developers, and entrepreneurs see an unlimited number of uses for this touch VR technology in almost all fields. Art, gaming, marketing, architecture, e-commerce, entertainment, health, education, real estate, automotive, lifestyle, fashion, and defense – there is no industry where touch virtual reality cannot be used to save or improve the lives of people.

Helping the Visually Impaired

Innovators and scientists are studying how the virtual reality technology can help those who can’t see. But, since VR currently relies heavily on the power of sight, it’s of little use to the visually impaired in its present form. The haptic technology – the sense of touch – has added a new dimension to virtual reality. Now, people who can’t see can hear and feel their surroundings.

Helping Traumatic Brain Injury Patients

We take the sense of touch for granted; it’s the most underrated human ability. But, for those who have suffered traumatic brain injury or other forms of injuries that affects the human ability to feel or hold objects, even the simplest of everyday tasks becomes a challenge. Brain trauma patients need regular physical therapy and by programming various exercises into the Tactai Touch enabled VR headset patients can touch and feel various objects without needing to lift heavy stuff.

Fighting Global Warming

Our greed to own things is destroying the planet. It’s true; trees are being cut and resources are being exploited to make goods for our consumption. We blame industries and the big corporations for global warming, and conveniently shrug off our role in the whole messy affair. We can do our bit for the planet by changing our behavior. Taking a leaf out of Tactai’s book, if we can trick ourselves into believing that the virtual objects we are able to touch are actual physical objects, we can partly address the issue. With the touch-enabled virtual reality on our side, we can focus on possessing things that are absolutely necessary and do away with luxury goods.

Tactai Touch Development Kit

Tactai Touch is currently available only to a handful of developers to build apps. To get your hands on this impressive piece of technology you’ve to sign up and wait for the first batch of production that’s said to happen in early 2017.

The Tactai Touch Development Kit would include Tactai Touch Wearable equipment without the legacy buttons, Tactai Touch Controller with joystick and legacy buttons, limited edition Tactai Touch HOPs SDK loaded with a library comprising of basic surface textures, SDK license, Tactai Touch license and plug-in to be used with Unity development platform or Unreal Engine Tools. The gadget works with all leading virtual reality headsets.

Tactai Touch – Sequence of Events

Before September 2014 – At Stanford University, Dr. Kuchenbecker worked on the haptic technology. September 2014 – Computer engineer and entrepreneur Steven Domenikos teams up with Dr. Katherine Kuchenbecker to start Tactai Inc. January 2015 – Early touch based prototypes developed. June 2015 – Tactai received Phase I US National Science Foundation grant. July 2015 – Tactai received funds from private investors. Birth of Tactai Touch for virtual reality. December 2015 – First working prototype of the gadget developed May 2016 – The team developed version 2 of Tactai Touch after multiple industrial design interactions. September 2016 – The Company received Phase II US National Science Foundation grant. January 2017 - Tactai Touch showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show 2017.

References

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