Tactai Wins National Science Foundation Grant To Bring Authentic Touch Experiences To Virtual Reality

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Tactai, the market leader in immersive and life-like touch for virtual reality (VR), is the recipient of the prestigious Phase I & II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards and supplemental Technology Enhancement for Commercial Partnerships funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) totaling over $1,000,000 for its proposal to “Touch and feel virtual objects with life-like realism”. Awards are based on NSF’s efforts to foster disruptive technologies in human-machine interface.

“Touch and feel virtual objects with life-like realism”

To create truly powerful experiences in the virtual world, Tactai's researchers delved deep into the physics and biology of how humans touch and feel in the natural world. These insights informed the development of proprietary touch-enabling technology that mimics nature and mirrors human biology. The technology recreates how humans perceive the presence of objects and their surface characteristics when interacting with them in the real world. Selected as a Top 5 Pieces of Consumer Tech to Watch in 2017 by Tech Exec, Tactai will use the funds to continue development of their Tactai Touch interface and Haptic Object Properties (HOPs) platform.

“It’s exciting to see the researchers and reviewers at NSF share our assessment of the potential impact that our technology can have for the new immersive computing paradigm”, said Steven D. Domenikos, founder and CEO, Tactai Inc. “There is not a single area of human expression where touch is not essential. The opportunity to introduce for the first time a commercial product that brings sense of natural touch into the digital world, will enable powerful new experiences and change the current paradigms of human-machine interaction.”

About Tactai

Tactai is pioneering the world's first wearable device that enables users to interact naturally with virtual objects by adding the sense of touch. The company creates compelling immersive experiences in Augmented and Virtual Reality by tracking hands and fingers and allowing them to touch and feel natural objects with life-like realism. The patent-pending Dynamic Tactile Wave(TM) technology creates multi-modal experiences by fully engaging the user's senses and bringing touch, sound, and light together. Tactai, Inc., is headquartered in Waltham, Mass., and was founded in 2014 by Steven D. Domenikos and Katherine J. Kuchenbecker. For more information, visit www.tactai.com