Teslasuit Will Let You Feel Virtual Reality
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Tesla Studios, a UK based company, has integrated Electro Muscular Stimulation (EMS) into a wireless suit to take Virtual Reality (VR) to the next level. They claim the suit is capable of letting you feel sensations ranging from the lightest breeze to the impact of a bullet.
The recent release of the Oculus Rift made big waves, but VR headsets are no longer big news for those in the know. They’re at the stage of polish and final tuning. The next big field of interest is in making input solutions that will unlock the interactive potential of VR. The missing part of the equation is the feedback from the virtual world. The new Teslasuit may be just the missing element.
The skintight Teslasuit uses EMS to provide tangible feedback from virtual worlds. The latest prototypes simulates haptic feedback using electric pulses, so if someone pokes you in a virtual world, the suit will make you feel a poke on the corresponding part of your body. In a recent demonstration on a TV documentary, UK celebrity Sara Cox was able, using the suit, to feel a hug from a motion captured person across the room.
To augment sensation, the suit has a temperature control device. Combined with the EMS element, the Teslasuit can simulate temperature to correspond to changes in the VR environment.
The suit itself is powered by a computer mounted on the belt of the suit, with a Quad Core 1 Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, and a 10,000mAh battery. It runs a specialty operating system called Tesla OS.
With an additional motion capture unit, the suit is apparently capable of detecting and capturing the user’s movements, delivering the sensor data to the VR environment in real-time.
There is still no information on the cost of the suit, nor when it will be released for sale, but so far the demonstrations look very promising.
