The one I am hoping to use with the Rift

It's cool, and I was excited for it, but as time goes on I am less excited about Novint's crazy exoskeletal arm and more interested in things like 3d hand tracking The less gear the player has to buy/wear the better.

However if we ever get any solid information about the Novint XIO, particularly if it has any haptic capabilities, I could get excited about it again.

"aabel" wrote:
It's cool, and I was excited for it, but as time goes on I am less excited about Novint's crazy exoskeletal arm and more interested in things like 3d hand tracking The less gear the player has to buy/wear the better.

However if we ever get any solid information about the Novint XIO, particularly if it has any haptic capabilities, I could get excited about it again.

As far as I understand it, haptic feedback is the primary purpose of the XIO. It's ability to detect motion to any degree seems to be more of an afterthought/side effect of the design.

It's primary purpose appears to be force feedback, but it's physical design implies that's basically limited to the elbow and wrist.

Keep in mind that their only existing product is the Novint Falcon. And while that can be used as a 3dof mouse replacement, it's primary selling point is very precise haptic feedback.

There exist a few systems like this in industry. First one off the top of my head is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcTL7Hig8h4 Festo ExoHand

It can act as a motorized exoskeleton for lifting / gripping heavy objects, provide force feedback when interacting with objects in virtual worlds, or just work as a robot hand that "clones" moves from another exohand and sends back force information.

Festo would probably charge a fortune for this. But consider this, up close it looks like this thing just came out of a reprap 3d printer. (It is 3d printed) It's 80% plastic, and has a bunch of hydraulic pistons and position sensors.

Point is, you could probably make your own at low/no cost. No joke.

Case in point. A quick search for "hand" and "Gauntlet" on thingiverse gives this. http://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=Gauntlet
http://www.shapeways.com/search?q=Gauntlet
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:56053

I wouldn't want to vouch for the quality of these designs (the one I've linked looks as if it doesn't have enough slack between the fingers and knuckles for full fist clenching).
But honestly, this might take a skilled designed the better part of 2 hours in cad to add the appropriate pistons and/or sensors. If you have no budget for pistons, hydraulic or otherwise, there are low tech ways round that using 2 servo motors, elastic bands / cords and pulleys.

(About 4$ per RC Servos, 2 servo per finger, 2 for each thumb, 8 fingers, 2 thumbs, about 800g of printed plastic, 1 or 2 arduinos, ...) Anyway you get the idea.

Once you've got a good design, have one of the commercial sites print one for you.

I know that's probably not what you want to hear, but short of spending a fortune on an industrial solution, this is the fastest / cheapest way to get a working force feedback glove within the next few months...

... damn it. Now I want to fire up catia and try doing this... grr... As if i haven’t got enough projects going on right now!
:lol:

Bookmarked for future reference.

yes the primary purpose is haptic feedback. Thats really Novint's specialty.

The Falcon was interesting but too limited. This could give me one arm into the virtual environment in a general way.

We'll just have to wait and see how if it comes out and how good/reliable it is. (I appreciate the build project ideas but I have too many projects already :)

Yeah. This would be awesome with the Rift.

It does look amazing but it's been "coming soon" forever.

All signs point to vaporware.

Im planning on getting Tactical Haptics Reactive Grip for the Razer Hydra http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=610iTKlYBVM
looks quite effective and not too expensive.

"ProfessorK" wrote:
This is both an input and output device. But IF they can actually deliver it at a consumer price with reasonable durability and it works, it could be very very cool...

Reminds me of the ROM brace I had after surgery: