This is not the story of a sadistic horror film, but of a venture which is backed by electronics giant Sony.
H2L, a Japanese startup, has developed a wearable armband which can inflict pain on users as they can experience the metaverse, the Financial Times reported.
When the biggest names in tech industry are chasing the goose that lays the golden eggs, how do they differ? Even with the backing of a giant such as Sony, a startup doesn’t have the resources to win over Meta or Microsoft. Then you try something strange that no one had thought of before. Luckily for H2L, they were working on this technology even before the Metaverse came out.
Bridging the gap between real and virtual
Emi Tamaki, H2L’s founder & CEO, has a medical situation that doesn’t permit her travel and experience the way people normally can. After a near-death experience in her teens, Tamaki choose to explore haptic technology to bridge the gap among the virtual and real worlds.
Aiming to free humans from the constraints of space, time and the body before the end of this decade, H2L has created an armband that allows the wearer to experience the Metaverse with haptic technology.
The band can detect flexion of the arm muscles, allowing the avatar to copy the wearer’s movement in the metaverse. Through electrical stimulation, it can also manipulate the muscles in his arm to feel the sensations of events taking place in the virtual world. This allows users to feel the weight of objects they are lifting and the force of a ball they are catching or even a bird’s pecking in their hands.
By permitting users to sense pain from the metaverse in the real world, Tamaki believes that users may have extra immersive experiences in the metaverse or even feel that they’re in a real-world, FT reported.
Sony’s big bet
H2L’s product is now available for sale on its website and can be purchased for as little as $82 (9,980 yen) however just in Japan as of now. Sony has backed this venture that has raised greater than one billion yen ($82 million) in its short decade-long existence.
With companies such as Meta announcing their own haptic-based glove, interest in these wearable devices will only increase. With the help of Sony, the H2L armband could be available in global markets very soon.
It is now up to the builders of the metaverse to build worlds that can use these technologies.
