Oomph! I鈥檝e just been shot in the back and I can feel the impact reverberating across my shoulders. Luckily for me and the rootin鈥�-tootin鈥� cowboy I鈥檝e just shot to smithereens, everything I鈥檓 experiencing is in virtual reality. But rather than simply seeing and hearing the Wild West scene around me, I鈥檓 wearing a suit that lets me feel it too.
The Teslasuit looks like a padded full-body wetsuit and is fitted with small components that produce electric shocks on the surface of the skin. The shocks don鈥檛 feel like electricity, they just cause my muscles to move. Whenever I fire my virtual pistol, a few targeted zaps force my hand to recoil as if I were holding a real one.
鈥淚t鈥檚 like a wearable computer on the surface of the skin,鈥� says Dimitri Mikhalchuk, senior vice president of the company, who鈥檚 showing me Teslasuit ahead of its UK unveiling at the Future Tech Now show in London this week.
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Aside from providing electric shocks, the suit can direct warmth or cold to different parts of the body depending on the virtual scenario. If there is fire in the scene, you can feel it. Teslasuit also has nearly one hundred sensors that monitor the user, such as their movements and heart rate.
The suit鈥檚 developers want it to be used beyond just gaming. For example, astronauts on board the International Space Station quickly loose muscle mass due to the lack of gravity, so have to exercise for a few hours a day. 鈥淭eslasuit could help stimulate specific muscles and monitor any changes,鈥� suggests Mikhalchuk, who recently presented the suit to NASA.
The first batch of suits have already been sold and will be delivered in the summer. They won鈥檛 yet be available to the general public, but instead companies will use it to help train their staff in virtual reality scenarios. These include simulations that will help people prepare to work in hazardous environments, such as on oil and gas rigs, as well as training security staff.
The聽firm also claims the suit could be used for rehabilitation programs in hospitals or to help athletes with training.
Teslasuit doesn鈥檛 have any external wires and is battery powered. It can do any processing required on chips embedded in the suit, or it can stream the data via Bluetooth to a larger computer to deal with. The suits will initially cost a few thousand dollars, but Mikhalchuk says they expect them to eventually be less than $1000.
One potential problem for a suit like this is someone maliciously creating a game that electrocutes or incapacitates the wearer. But the team say that they have safeguards in place that limit any attempts to exceed medically safe limits.
And it鈥檚 not perfect.聽Not all of the suit鈥檚 zaps worked perfectly, with some buzzing me in a slightly unpleasant way, more than just tweaking my muscles as they were supposed to. But Mikhalchuk says that is because the demonstration suit is a bit too big for me, as to work effectively it needs to be skintight.
Ultimately, Mikhalchuk and his colleagues want to make the next generation of clothing. 鈥淚 actually wear my suit聽whenever I鈥檓 flying. Especially on a long-haul flight when the muscle stimulation is fantastic,鈥� he says.
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