Most companies join the pack as soon as a technology becomes mainstream. A good way to save on research and development, no doubt about it, but it is also a limit that often rewards courageous 'pioneers'. Today everyone produces cell phones with touch screens, but iPhone is iPhone.
Today, needless to say (just feel your wrists at the news that are announced at CES2022) are metaverse e virtual reality the “trains” to get on. Many companies will get there, some are leading the charge directly.
One of these is HTC, with a system that promises to eliminate any virtual reality glove by replacing it with two simple bracelets to put on the wrists. It is called Vive Wrist Tracker.
VIVE Wrist Tracker, put another reality on your wrists
HTC's strategy is different from that of others. Unlike other VR headset manufacturers like Oculus by Meta (Facebook's new parent company), which cater to end users, HTC Vive focuses on business applications.
Key applications (many already delivered to customers) range from training medical and emergency response personnel to optimizing mechanical design, learning and health-related uses. The Wrist Tracker will greatly extend these uses, capturing much more data from the movement of the wrists.
A VR headset typically uses cameras to detect any movement of the handheld controllers. It is thanks to this detection that a user's hands are visible. HTC's solution is a pair of bracelets that can be worn just like watches: on the wrists.
They connect wirelessly to the viewer and detect wrist movements very accurately, even working when your hands are out of sight of the viewer (you can use your hands even when behind your back, for example).
Possible applications
They are a lot. Among others, VIVE Wrist Tracker can be attached not only to wrists, but also to objects: I'm thinking of arcade guns in the gaming field, or fire hoses to help emergency response teams train in virtual environments rather than learning only from personal experiences . Combined with the VR headset the wrist-worn system further increases tracking detail.
