Tokyo-based company H2L recently announced an interesting product for the metaverse. In this video clip from "The Virtual Opportunities Show" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on March 22, Fool.com contributor Rachel Warren discusses the start-up's technology that would allow users to feel pain and virtual events in real life.
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Rachel Warren: So, the company is called H2L, one of its very well-known investors, it's backed by Sony (SONY -0.13%). The company has been around for about a decade now. But what's interesting is the article says that H2L Technology "replicates the sensation of touch by using electrical stimulation to manipulate the arm muscles and mimic sensations." Essentially what H2L has done is they've built a product that features an armband that detects when you flex your muscles and that enables your avatar in the metaverse to copy the body's movements so that you actually feel the presence and weight of objects.
The article says the technology uses electrical stimulation to manipulate the arm muscles. The chief executive and co-founder of the company said, "Feeling pain enables us to turn the metaverse world into a real world with increased feelings of presence and immersion." What's interesting about this is one of the things that's been talked about a lot with the metaverse is this idea of being able to essentially do anything in the metaverse, have any experience you want someday that you could have in the real world.
I don't really know. I don't know. I can't imagine that anyone would want to actually feel pain in the metaverse. I feel like that's something you wouldn't want to have transcend between the real world and the virtual world. But it is a really interesting concept. This Tokyo-based company, H2L, backed by Sony, it is still privately held, although the company is talking about potentially going public in the near future.
What's interesting is the founder. Apparently, she started working in this area after she had a near-death experience in her late teens linked to congenital heart disease, and she said, "I realized life is precious so I decided to work on a new field that I really wanted to dig into and there was no one doing research at the time." She says the technology could be used for games, but people could also use it to feel virtual world events in real life.
Forget maybe feeling pain in the metaverse, for example, the article says the technology could convey this feeling of participating in an activity from a user's childhood such as throwing a ball with a parent, kind of replicating those senses from the physical world in the virtual world. Something else she noted was people like me who can't go out often because she doesn't have enough muscle due to heart disease, can travel anywhere at any time. This armband in this technology enables you to feel these real-world sensations in the virtual world.
One use case is supposedly being able to feel pain. But I think what's even more compelling is the use case she was mentioning as well as some of you type chronic illness to be able to have those experiences, to maybe relive something special for your child, to travel somewhere, to do something that maybe you're not physically capable of doing and still be able to have that experience replicated in a virtual world. That I thought was a really positive note on that article brought up as well.
