Guest Lecture: Dr. Emi Tamaki, “Share the Hands: UnlimitedHand, Interactivity through Human Hand Somatics”

Dr. Emi Tamaki, co-founder of H2L, Inc. and Assistant Professor at Waseda University will be demonstrating her UnlimitedHand, a new type of user input which can grant a human hand access to virtual dimensions and provide new tactile experiences in multiple fields of application.

Human sensations are formed through closed loop systems comprising of both an Input and an Output. The agenda for Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) research has been to simultaneously provide both Input and Output, modeling sensations recognizable by our Sensory System. Recent pursuits focus on devices that augment visual and auditory faculties. The hand, however, a part of the body that allows rich sensations and expressions to be articulated, deserves closer examination.

We have developed “UnlimitedHand”, a wearable device granting a human hand access to virtual dimensions. The device reads hand movements with a hybrid set of motion sensors while triggering hand motions by exerting Electric Muscle Stimuli on the wearer’s forearm. This simultaneous exchange initiates a closed loop between human hand and computer.

In this event, we will look into how this device is capable of providing new tactile experiences in multiple fields of applications.

H2L recently Kickstarted the UnlimitedHand controller and and as one of their stretch goals is creating a plugin for use of the UnlimitedHand with Unreal Engine for game development.

Dr. Emi Tamaki is an Assistant Professor at Waseda University and the Co-Founder and Chief Researcher of H2L, Inc. She is aiming to research and popularize VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) in the transmission of the tactile feeling and other sensations between computers and humans.

In 2010, she developed “PossessedHand”, a device to control human finger movements by a computer and wearable electrodes for experiencing the VR world. PossessedHand has drawn the attention of many scientific societies and has appeared on CNN and ABC. PossessedHand was also selected as one of Time magazine’s Best 50 Inventions. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo Graduate School in 2011. In the same year, she received the University of Tokyo President’s Award for Students and was the valedictorian of her class. In 2012, she established a startup company with Ken Iwasaki and Tomy Kamada, H2L Inc., which research tactile feeling. In 2013, she resumed research activities at Waseda University. She was recently awarded the Woman of the Year Runner-up Prize in the Nikkei Woman. Starting in 2013 she began working on a new device, “UnlimitedHand”, that is the world’s first haptic controller in the VR game world. UnlimitedHand allows the user to touch and feel virtual objects. UnlimitedHand was launched in September, 2015 at TechCrunch SF. On KickStarter, the crowd-funding of UnlimitedHand reached their goal in just 22 hours..