Apple patents haptic gloves for virtual reality – How smart Technology changing lives – InTallaght

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Apple has registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office about haptic gloves that would work in combination with virtual reality devices, being compatible with both Mac computers and autonomous devices, such as the virtual reality viewer that Apple has long been rumored to be working on.

Haptic gloves provide the user with the sensation of touch and pressure through electrical signals

These gloves would have an internal system of cavities and electrodes capable of generating in the user sensations of touch and pressure in synchrony with the contents generated by the virtual reality environment in which they are immersed. The electrical signal would activate a component that would generate a small displacement in the internal component in proportion to the intensity of the stimulus pressure.

Through this haptic response (tactile perceptions) the sensation of a user touching or holding different objects could be recreated. According to Apples patent documentation, this would include simulate differences in textures, tactile sensations and perceptions associated with different materials, some as concrete and complex as the sensation of letting sand slip through your fingers.

From the diagrams that accompany the patent, it is possible that these Apple haptic gloves work in conjunction with a Mac computer that would be in charge of providing the information about the sensations, without being necessary to use a virtual reality viewer, so that its use would not necessarily be linked to virtual reality with one of these devices.

In fact, the possibility is added that the haptic gloves patented by Apple can operate linked to other external devices such as cameras, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional. Finally in the document there is a single mention of headset, Understood as a virtual reality viewer, so a complete virtual immersion environment could be configured within the Apple ecosystem with multiple applications, both professional and leisure. It could even be part of that recent prediction that gives the iPhone ten years to live until it is replaced by virtual reality devices.

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Apple patents haptic gloves for virtual reality - How smart Technology changing lives - InTallaght