Actronika on Haptics in Games and Its Solutions
Actronika's Thomas Farnoux has told us about the company's history, explained what haptics is, and discussed the company's solutions.
Introduction
Hello to all 80 Level readers! I am Thomas Farnoux, Partnership Manager at Actronika. I joined the company seven years ago as an intern during my studies, initially as a Business Developer. I was part of the team that initiated our Seed investment round and was among the first three people hired for the project, leading the way in the business domain.
Throughout my tenure, I have worked extensively in various areas of the business and successfully secured multiple co-development contracts with industrial corporates, which is Actronika's core focus. Our main objective is to provide human-machine interface (HMI) solutions to a diverse range of devices.
We have integrated our HD Haptic platform into numerous car HMIs, ensuring a seamless user experience. Additionally, we are collaborating with top-tier mobile companies to enhance touch technology in smartphones. Our work also extends to other areas such as luxury, gaming, wellness, marketing, and more.
As a Deep Tech company, Actronika is fortunate to have a technology that can be applied to a wide array of verticals. The possibilities are extensive, and we continue to explore new opportunities for growth and innovation.
The Story of Actronika
Actronika's story began in 2016 when the start-up was created by Vincent Hayward, Rafal Pijewski, and Gilles Meyer. Vincent, considered the pioneer in the field, dedicated his entire life to haptics and touch-related research. Rafal, his former lab engineer, now serves as our CTO, and Gilles is our CEO and a serial entrepreneur.
The company was founded with a fundamental element of haptic display that could be embedded into any HMI. From the outset, we had a hardware/software platform in mind, primarily focused on implementing clicks and virtual buttons into various P.O.Cs. After seven years of extensive R&D covering diverse topics and client use cases, we are now able to offer Skinetic and Unitouch, the current form of our HW/SW platform, although they are not the final versions. Our primary objective is to provide a haptic experience that closely resembles reality to anyone who interacts with our products. Skinetic, starting with the vest, represents our first product solely dedicated to haptics. The product line should be viewed as a developmental platform for next-generation on-body haptic rendering.
Haptics in Games
Haptics is the science of touch. The term comes from the Greek word "Haptikos," which means "to touch or grasp." The etymology itself provides a key understanding of how touch works. Firstly, there is touch, which refers to the vibrotactile sensation that the skin feels. It allows the brain to differentiate between different textures and is a crucial component of touch. For example, lightly exploring a garment showcases this aspect.
Next is grasp, which involves the kinesthetic input from an external physical object. In simpler terms, it refers to the feedback received by your muscles and joints regarding the weight or constraint of an object. For instance, when your hand is blocked by a table, you can sense the resistance.
Lastly, the term itself does not include temperature, which plays a vital role in touch. Temperature provides important feedback, including pain sensation when necessary. It also aids in the differentiation of materials in daily haptic experiences. For example, a table made of half wood and half brushed aluminum, with veins and stripes in the same direction, would be challenging to differentiate using only vibrotactile and kinesthetic feedback. However, when the temperature is taken into account, it becomes crystal clear—wood feels warm, while aluminum feels cold.
The sense of touch is essential for several reasons. It is the largest organ of the body, covering an area of approximately 2 square meters, and exhibits varying sensitivity across different body parts. The cortical homunculus provides a clear illustration of this sensitivity distribution. This explains why, when aiming for a haptic device that closely mimics reality with a relatively limited point of contact, the torso is often chosen as the first option.
Touch is always active and is the fastest sense to which our brain can react. The average reaction time is 0.25 seconds for vision, 0.17 seconds for audio, and 0.15 seconds for touch. This also explains the lack of high-definition haptic devices on the market until recently. For many years, touch was too quick to be digitally simulated and physically replicated. However, with the advancements in computing capabilities, HD haptic devices with low latencies are now possible, leading to significant developments. The PS5 controller serves as a good example of next-generation haptics.
Now that the hardware is available, attention must be given to how developers will utilize this new haptic generation. The addition of frequency as a third dimension, in addition to time and amplitude settings, complicates the development of haptic effects. Efforts are being made to simplify the knowledge required to create proper haptic feedback and provide developers with user-friendly tools for implementation in their experiences.
The Company's Solutions
Unitouch is the software that accompanies Skinetic and is primarily targeted toward developers. However, it serves as the fundamental software/firmware basis for all of our developments. It is divided into various components, with the haptic engine being the core element responsible for haptic-oriented physics simulations that encompass touch in its entirety. The Unitouch Engine is present not only in the Vest but also in other products we are currently developing, both internally and with clients.
As mentioned earlier, creating HD Haptic effects is a highly complex process. To address this, we have developed an HD Haptic Tactile Elements library. Unlike some haptic companies that use audio as an input for haptic effects, which has limitations such as a lack of spatialization capability and irrelevant haptic artifacts (e.g., haptic feedback on voice or absence of haptic feedback for high-pitched sensations), our approach focuses on tactile elements.
The most intriguing aspect is the Unitouch Studio, which provides a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) for haptic composition and integration. It offers developers the appropriate level of abstraction and tools to facilitate the versatile integration of HD Haptic effects without causing frustration.
Our workflow is divided into three main steps. Firstly, the Library offers over 200 Tactile Elements, a collection of haptic samples that are contextualized and categorized for easy access when creating HD Haptic experiences. Secondly, developers utilize these Tactile Elements in our timing and spatialization tool to generate Tactile Sensations. This tool allows users to employ the elements within a timeline divided into tracks, enabling the creation and optimization of more intricate sensations on HD Haptic devices. Subsequently, these complex sensations can be mapped onto networks of actuators for accurate rendering in the third step. Finally, the third step involves Tactile Interaction. Once the Tactile Sensation has been created, users simply extract the corresponding file and link it to their desired event using our Unity or Unreal Engine plugins.
Overall we are building Unitouch to be as exhaustive as possible, we are already building an extended library with 1000+ tactile elements, and basically, we will not stop until mapping the Tactile World. Unitouch is also an engine, it already physically represents touch for the next hardware versions, including temperature and force feedback.
We started Actronika with a product called Tactronik. This product served as the foundation for our developments. Over time, we combined various features that were previously implemented in different specific setups into one major update, resulting in the creation of Unitouch. As part of this update, we also introduced a graphical user interface (GUI) to streamline the development of sensations and save time. Unitouch is the culmination of our work here at Actronika over the past 7 years.
The initial feedback we received came from our industrial clients who have been using our platform for years. Additionally, our VR partners have also provided valuable feedback. However, I believe the most significant feedback comes from our own staff, as we are a team of passionate individuals dedicated to VR and gaming.
Future Plans
We are focused on delivering force feedback and temperature feedback. This will take time. In the meantime, you can expect the first versions of suits to include more sensations and additional actuators, aiming to provide what could be conceptualized as a Haptic Pixel for the best spatialization.
