Gloveone lets you use both hands to sense and interact with virtual objects

There isn’t much wearable tech that gives cause to deploy a slightly modified Robbie Williams lyric, but if ever there were one it’s NeuroDigital Technologies’ latest venture. And that lyric is, of course: “I just wanna feel real glove.”

“Gloveone enables users to feel and touch any virtual object that they can see on the screen or in their VR headsets,” explains Jonatan Martínez, Chief Research Officer at Gloveone. “If a virtual apple is shown on the screen, with Gloveone you will be able to feel its shape or weight, sense all of its physical features, and even smash it!” I don’t know why anyone would necessarily want to smash an apple, but for all intents and purposes Gloveone is the bridge over the gaping void in virtual reality between observation and participation. As Martínez rightly points out, “most developments within the industry have been focused only on the sense of sight” – but what’s the point in having all that texture, right there in front of you, only to reach out to touch it and find out you can’t?

Currently sitting pretty on Kickstarter, Gloveone has 23 days left to get to where it needs to be and – at $73,000 – has just under half the funding it needs to be on your doorstep by 2016. It’s not all for shooting people or destroying fruit, either; Chief Scientific Officer, neuroscientist Fransisco Nieto, also cites benefits for the “brain impaired” in what he calls the “most human face of technology”.

VR is advancing at a rate of knots. Fove will transform the digital environments of VR users on the basis of their eye movements through the use of infrared cameras – it’s the first time human expressions have been integrated into VR in the commercial real.