Senso Suit & New Senso Glove – Controller for VR/AR
Many of Senso Glove users showed interest for a full body tracking solution and Senso packed the same technology into a new product – Senso Suit.
Senso Suit is a set of 15 modules. Each module is a small box (1×1 inch), with its own IMU and vibration motor, which could be mounted on arms, legs and torso. The modules are wired connected one-by-one and communicate with PC via USB-cable or Wi-Fi connection.
Senso Suit enables full body tracking and haptic feedback for use in VR gaming or it could be used as a very affordable motion capture solution in games or video production. Senso also provides free SDK for C++, Unreal Engine and Unity. Here’s a video on Senso Suit, showing how pure IMU-solution could do tracking well:
As it’s shown in the demo – the suit behaves well without any standalone cameras and its suitable for many cases. But some other require perfect absolute positioning and many of our partners asked for it. We’ve explored the possible options and chosen the quickly emerging SteamVR/Lighthouse technology, the same that is used by HTC in its Vive and Vive tracker solutions. As a result we’ve built SteamVR tracking sensor inside each of the Senso Suit modules, so now one can use any Valve’s SteamVR based tracking stations (e.g. HTC Vive) to make body tracking even better.
Senso Glove DK2
Senso Glove has also received SteamVR technology support in its new version for developers – Senso Glove DK2.
Unlike many other companies, Senso doesn’t just attach Vive Tracker or similar device to a glove, but integrates SteamVR sensors directly into the Glove. So the whole solution becomes much more compact, lightweight and cheap.
Senso Glove DK2 has new design, new motherboard and all the features of DK1 – 7 IMU per glove, precise tracking of each individual finger and haptic feedback. It could be still used as pure IMU solution, providing almost zero drift in absolute positioning. But those having HTC Vive or other compatible SteamVR/Lighthouse tracking solutions – can use SteamVR tracking with the Glove, thus having almost perfect tracking quality for each finger and absolutely no drifting. The Glove is wireless and provides 150 measurements per second with <10ms latency over Bluetooth Low Energy. The battery enables up to 10 hours of work. Preorders for DK2 are already opened, with the first shipments starting in the end of March.
GDC17
Senso is currently presenting at GDC17 in San Francisco, showing Senso Glove DK2 and Senso Suit. We welcome you to visit our booth #2142 South Hall if you’d be there by any chance!
What’s next
Senso keeps polishing the technology behind its products. It’s 3 months already as Senso has started selling Developers Kits to game and VR attraction vendors.
But Senso’s main focus is consumer market. The company sees its mission in making VR really great and affordable for everyone. Senso aims to release the consumer Glove version in few months, with the price being much lower.
The main limitation here – is games and apps compatibility with the new way of input. This is where most of Senso efforts are focused now. The Glove already uses simple gestures to emulate existing game controllers, it has embedded SteamVR support and provides external tracking – thus the Glove won’t lose in its capabilities to traditional game controllers from the very beginning. Moreover there will be additional opportunities as Senso has an open-source SDK and any developer can implement its support into his software.
Today there are many competing solutions on the market – from Leap Motion to Manus VR. Larger companies, like Oculus, showed their activity in this field too. Senso believes that in this year the industry will come to API standards for hand input, thus simplifying its usage for developers. This is where this technology could become mainstream, similar to the way, how game joysticks or computer mice appeared in our homes long ago.
