‘NullSpace VR’ are Building an Upper Body Haptic Suit and Gloves

NullSpace VR are a startup formed from Rochester University Robotics Club who are building a haptic suit and gloves they claim will allow you to feel your virtual worlds.

So, as virtual reality approaches it’s first milestone to technological maturity, VR input solutions are coming thick and fast and VR headset displays are (at present) a known quantity, what will be missing from our virtual reality experiences come the consumer Vr revolution next year? Feedback from the virtual world you’re inhabiting of course.

NullSpace VR are attempting to tackle that apparent hole in the virtual experience by building a full upper-body haptic suit and gloves which promise to let you feel the VR world pushing back. The suit is comprised of 32 ‘vibration pads’ situated both in the chest-based harness, fingers of the glove and straps on our arms.

In addtion to this, NullSpace VR offers input via inertial sensors and ‘fine grained’ gesture input too. It’s not clear at this stage precisely how the inertial input or (perhaps more interestingly) gesture input is tracked, but it is clear the system will require direct software support in order to work as intended.

Therefore, the NullSpace VR team have now opened their doors to developers, asking interested parties to download their software API, which will hold the keys for games and applications to integrate with the suit.

The lack of 1:1 precision in the inertial tracking portion of the tech specs worries us a little, but the idea of of getting that feedback from your virtual environment is extremely appealing and thus far, this startup has this hardware space largely to itself, with the exception of the disappointing Kor-FX Vest perhaps. We look forward to hearing more from NullSpace VR in the future.