Gloveone, the glove that lets you handle virtual objects

Virtual reality is much talked-about with the deployment of numerous headsets like the Occulus Rift, the Samsung Gear or the well-known Cardboard. The fact remains that most of the experiences offered are at times impressive but do not engage all the senses.

And that is where a connected glove like Gloveone comes into its own. It gives you the sense of touch and lets you handle objects in a virtual world, thereby enhancing the experience offered by such headsets.

The glove is fitted with 6 inertia sensors and 10 piezoelectric sensors rendering the sense of touch, and Bluetooth to connect to the headset… All these components let you:
– Interact with virtual objects or buttons to trigger actions.
– Retranscribe the weight of objects handled
– Experience the sense of touch according to the surfaces and textures you touch

This consumer glove is the first step towards democratization of haptic. It will pave the ways for everything that virtual reality promises.

Virtual reality is a current trend in retail. Retailers like The North Face or Tommy Hilfiger have showcased these headsets in their New York stores to offer their customers an atypical experience through 360° videos. Car manufacturers are also offering them left, right and centre, to give users the sensation of driving their latest concept car on a racing circuit or to discover the very latest model marketed, like Audi is doing.
Brands like Procter & Gamble or Kimberly Clark use the potential of these headsets to test their merchandising or new packaging on customers.
All these experiments meet with varying degrees of success but already let us imagine what the future of retail could resemble.
The odds are that in 5 to 7 years such a technology will drastically change the Internet as we know it today. The Internet will become a virtual world… That is when the Second Life could rise from its ashes and offer a space where consumers would enter a virtual store feeling that they are in a physical retail outlet with the option of feeling products in a very detailed and precise way (texture, weight, colours, design, etc.).
We could even see veritable virtualized shopping centres like the existing ones and thus do our shopping from our sofas, thus avoiding mingling with the crowd? And what if the future of e-commerce were quite simply connected to virtual reality and the haptic…?