Dexmo Exoskeleton Gloves Can Give You All The VR Feels
Virtual reality is fast becoming commoditized with the rise of consumer-ready VR goggles like the Gear VR or, in the near future, the Oculus Rift. However, for all the sights, and sometimes sounds, that these devices offer, they still lack one crucial part of the whole VR experience: touch. That problem may have now met its match in Dexmo, an admittedly frightening looking exoskeleton just for your hands that not only lets you control robotic or virtual hands, it also lets you feel that a bit as well.
Dexmo's goals are quite noble: to make such motion-capture contraptions available to interested parties at an affordable price. And by interested parties, they don't just mean researchers robotics engineers. Dexmo can be used by almost anybody, from controlling robotic hands to gripping VR objects. Of course, it's not exactly cheap, with the most inexpensive starting at $75, and it isn't at all ready to be used out of the box. Plus it also depends on the software and content available for use. That said, it's still better than the alternative, which is pining for a prototype that you can either never reach or one that will cost you an arm, which, in the context of a exoskeleton glove, would be ironic.
Dexmo comes in two types, Classic and F2. Both types boast of Dexmo Robotics' 11 degrees of motion, being able to capture three degrees for the thumb (bend, split, rotate), and two (bend, split) for each of the remaining four fingers. What the Dexmo F2 adds is digital force feedback for the index finger and thumb only. This allows the exoskeleton to mimic what those same fingers would feel if they were holding something solid, like a ball. It does so by braking the joint of those two fingers and constraining their movement. Naturally, the Dexmo F2's price starts at a much higher $179.
As promising as it sounds, Dexmo, unfortunately, isn't a finished commercial product. It is still a Kickstarter campaign that may or may not reach its $200,000 funding goal in the remaining 27 days, or may or may not be able to ship on May 2015, if it is able to ship at all. Dexmo Robotics assures would-be backers that it has already talked with manufacturing partners even before starting its Kickstarter, but we can never be really be sure. Of course, no one wants to see a promising Kickstarter to fail and we do hope that Dexmo will bear fruit one way or another, bringing the future of Johnny Mnemonic ever so closer to our present.
SOURCE: Kickstarter