Disney Research Has Created a Ready Player One-Esque Haptic Feedback Jacket

In Ready Player One — both the book and the movie — the plot centers around a virtual reality video game called The Oasis. Players can access The Oasis through virtual reality goggles and gloves, but have the option of upgrading to a haptic feedback suit to enhance the experience. That fictional haptic feedback suit allows players to feel what’s happening to their body in the virtual world, and now Disney Research has made a similar suit a reality.

The device they’ve created is called the Force Jacket. Unlike the fictional haptic feedback suit in Ready Player One, it only covers the player’s upper body for now. The Force Jacket performs that haptic feedback using an array of 26 pneumatically-actuated airbags that are positioned around the torso and sleeves of the jacket. Those airbags each have a corresponding force sensor, so that the system knows precisely how much force it’s applying to given areas of the user’s body.

When paired with their control system, the Force Jacket is capable producing pressure and vibrations on any part of the player’s torso and arms. With that mechanism, it can recreate the feeling of a hug, a punch, or even a snake crawling across your body. The Force Jacket is, for now, just one of many prototypes that Disney Research is developing in order to improve immersion in virtual worlds. But, it’s a novel and functional way to build the kind of haptic feedback suit that has been relegated to science fiction until now.