Ultraleap Shows Off Virtual Bonsai Tree In XR With Haptic Tech At CES

At CES 2024 in Las Vegas, January 8 12, UK's Ultraleap used haptic techology to allow visitors to ... [+] experience rain and sun through a virtual bonsai tree using AR and VR. Extended Reality (XR) is a high growth market. In 2023, the global XR market was valued at $49.6 billion and expected to grow to $519.5 billion by 2032.

In 2021, an estimated 57.4–90.9 million people were using XR technology, including 57.4 million for virtual reality (VR) and 90.9 million for augmented reality (AR). On January 10 at CES, HTC introduced its Vive Full Facial Tracker kit for developers and businesses made for the Vive XR Elite, which supports OpenXR.

It captures up to 38 facial blend shapes, including lips, teeth, tongue, cheeks, nose and chin and is expected to enhance the immersive expression of emotions and facial gestures in VR. But one of the most significant XR announcements at CES 2024 came from Sony through the debut of their high end XR headset for spatial content creation.

Sony's device is positioning its new headset towards 3D content creators and engineers instead of consumers who want to play video games in VR. Ultraleap a UK company that creates digital worlds through hand tracking and haptic technology is showing how extended reality (XR) interactions feel through creating a virtual bonsai tree at CES 2024, January 8 12, 2024.

The application for the virtual bonsai tree was developed in Unity with the haptic sensations developed using Ultraleap Sensation Designer, which is part of the company's development kit and delivered through their haptics development hardware, the HDK REC192. Miguel Rodrigues, Senior Vice President of Product at Ultraleap said that one of the biggest challenges in AR and VR is that you can't feel what you touch.

"Feedback is critical for interaction confirmation and has become common in every phone today," said Rodrigues. "The bonsai demo aims to show how to solve this challenge merging haptics with VR in a way that people haven't yet experienced." "With Ultraleap's hand tracking and haptics technology, we can track the precise movements of a user's hand and employ ultrasound waves to send sensations to the palms," said Rodrigues.

In the case of the bonsai demo at CES, Rodrigues says visitors can perform the peaceful caretaking of a bonsai tree and experience sensations of warming rays from the sun or drips of water falling from their hands that give life to a tree. "Merging hand tracking, haptics and VR allows you to interact with the digital world like never before — with no controllers needed — almost as if it's real life.," he adds.

Rodrigues says this experience shows that haptics technology goes far beyond simple vibrations in the hands to sophisticated virtual sensations like warmth that make the XR experiences more believable and immersive. "The haptic technology in the virtual bonsai tree is an emotional and mindful experience," he said.

In the future, Rodrigues says that mid air haptics will have applications in gesture control systems, XR, automotive user interfaces, and headless (no screen) interfaces. "Sophisticated haptics like this will make XR interactions more immersive, effective, and feel more real.".