A new language of touch in the metaverse

my parents immigrated from singapore

to the united states in the 1980s to a

tiny town in the south called oxford

mississippi

and his poor students they ended up in a

place where they didn’t know a single

person

they got married while in school and

were taken in by a loving couple named

norman and maxine nelson who ended up

covering the entire cost of their

wedding the thousand dollars it took to

put on and who i would come to call

grandma and grandpa

that stylish kid in the middle is me

thank you and next to me my two younger

brothers dexter nicholas who i’m

extremely close with grandma and grandpa

became our anchors in this country and

were and still are so influential in how

he became his people

my grandma’s an internal optimist and

even as she developed an extremely rare

neurological disease and parkinson’s

she remained and still remains today

very positive

like most first-generation

americans i went away for work after

college in my case to an extremely

remote place

in hawaii called molokai four thousand

miles away from home

and like most i really struggled with

staying connected with my family and

friends

especially my grandma

that’s my grandma and that tiny person

in that tiny square that’s how we

connect and it’s so frustrating how

limiting it really is and still is to

connect with people that we care about

when we’re not physically there

like most people

i visited home once a year

hoping to make up for lost time in those

few days

over time as my grandmother’s

parkinson’s developed and progressed her

hands started shaking we found ourselves

holding hands a lot more especially her

shaky hand

and in those moments i realized how

underestimated our sense of touch really

is

how powerful it is to convey emotions

the scent of touch is the first we

develop as children it’s how we

understand our world

it’s how we understand ourselves and one

another

it even influences our language we

describe people as warm soft hard cold

this sense of touch is really what

bridges the gap when our words fail to

communicate how we feel think about

life’s hardest or most joyful moments

there’s nothing nothing to be said but

the sense of touch can bridge that

emotional connection

and this is what’s really missing when

we think about communication today

i’m really grateful for the fact that we

can have something like a video call

and today we’re in boston where the

first audio call was made in 1876

but what’s next

what comes after this

what’s a paradigm like when we can free

ourselves from this tiny glass screen

what’s a paradigm look like when we can

physically feel connected

well in 2015 i met two people that would

become my fast friends my brothers and

co-founders of a company called emerge

and this was our idea in a napkin moment

this was the philosophy that we each had

individually for our lives and the

philosophy of a company we wanted to

build together

and what you’ll notice is it all centers

around human connection

the relationships the bonds that we have

with our friends and family

not only with them but also people on

the other side of the table on the other

side of the fence on the other side of

the border

enhancing human connection and empathy

this is the mission that we wanted to

pursue

and each of them shared with me a very

personal story that resonated with mine

the person on the left is izak and next

to him his aunt nina’s

his family’s from spain and like most

people had very close to his extended

family his aunt ines was like a second

mother to him

he grew up his childhood spending many

summers at her house in alicante in

spain and like myself izak moved away

from home for work first to germany then

to colombia

aunt nina’s one day developed breast

cancer and she fought it for months

before it spread

one day izak got the call

that same day he took a flight from

colombia to spain

from madrid took a train to alicante

from alicante took a taxi to the

hospital and once he stepped into that

hospital room

she whispered his name

she tried to say more

he reached out and held her hand and she

passed away

he shared with me that very personal

story and how in that moment he realized

how disconnected he really was from her

for all those months and how badly he

wanted to just have the

slightest sense of touch to be able to

do something as simple as send a caress

over distance to comfort her

this is mauricio talking with his family

in ecuador in 2015 when we were building

our company we were still in los angeles

and they had just had a son together in

those early moments of childhood there’s

moments that cannot be captured

in a phone

first steps first words

a child can’t hold a conversation when

they’re one years old but it’s that

sense of touch that really grounds us to

this reality that makes us feel present

mauricio daily wanted to reach through

that screen and physically hold the hand

of his wife of his son to do something

as simple as throw a ball back and forth

now we all have moments like this where

we are separated from people that we

deeply care about or that sense of touch

could do so much to make us feel

connected

so we set out on a journey and attempt

to communicate touch over distance

but like many early technologies there

are challenges we are entering a new era

of the internet many are calling the

metaverse

and it’s going to be enabled by pretty

radical technologies like

edge computing

decentralized organizations nft

blockchain but we think the most

important aspect of this next era will

be one that allows us to feel more

connected with our loved ones because

after all if not

what is achieved if we remain limited

with these two senses

now don’t get me wrong we’re not

attempting to replicate the feeling of

the in-person reality

or attempting to enhance it when that’s

just not possible

the sense of touch has been attempted

for many decades

gloves wearables suits these one day

could potentially enhance or attempt to

replicate how the reality feels but it

creates a lot of friction for a person

to use

we ask the question

what if you don’t have to what if we

create a new understanding a new

expectation of touch in the virtual

world for us it was way more important

to create a frictionless experience for

a person one where you don’t have to put

anything on your body at all so we took

a different approach

[Music]

now if you were close enough to this

subwoofer you would have not only heard

that sound but you would have felt it

and that’s because sound is a mechanical

energy wave that can impart a pressure

on our skin that we can physically feel

especially our hands

now imagine taking that basic concept of

feeling sound energy

channeling it using a very special

speaker

at a particular frequency that’s above

the human hearing range

and feeling all of that energy in a

single point

imagine sculpting that sound in three

dimensions

that you could physically feel and hold

and even share with someone that’s not

physically there

what if we could create a new language

of touch in the virtual world one that

does not feel or behave like reality

what new possibilities we could enable

in art and expression and creativity

for most of us the most powerful

experience would be a shared one

and it’s pretty remarkable how with the

slightest sense of touch

and the right context

you can physically feel connected

well you don’t have to imagine too much

longer because for the last six years

we’ve been working tirelessly to make

this happen and today

here it is

[Music]

[Applause]

so this device

creates the sense of touch using sound

energy and you can not only feel that

sensation here and above the device

within three feet or a meter distance

above it but also here

and here within a 120 degree cone of

interaction

now this device works in a variety of

scenarios in context with a tv with a 2d

screen with virtual reality with

augmented reality

our goal is to create a platform for

touch in the virtual world a platform

for touch in the metaverse but because

it’s pretty difficult to see

touch i’m going to show you a video of

people using our product instead

this is absolutely

that’s fantastic

god that’s pretty wild anyone in

particular you would like to try this

experience with yeah my dad thinking

that oh let’s say my mom is playing

thinking that i’m gonna be able to touch

her like

right here in the game it makes me happy

i just imagine that that would be a

really meaningful thing to virtually be

able to hold someone’s hand while they

are really craving some type of human

interaction kind of just to connect with

that person and have a completely new

experience you interact with people in

your space virtually

having that and then adding a physical

experience so i just threw one layer so

it was like whoa

that sensory aspect was so fun i hate to

say i feel like a supervillain almost oh

my god my god would love

this it’s very tactile and the fact that

you don’t have to use those controls and

stuff like that using your hands makes

it feel i don’t know it’s more visceral

interacting with people

this is perfect this is i mean again

this brings no matter what the scale of

it this brings another level to that

incorporating our sense of touch

across distance

this has been a long time coming

we are right now in a technological leap

yet we still feel very disconnected from

people that we deeply care about

our sense of touch

is how we understand ourselves

our world and one another

we all have people that we deeply care

about that we are physically separated

from

we think it’s time to change that very

very soon

if you agree

join us as we build a new paradigm to

enhance human connection across distance

and time one where you can physically

feel

connected

thank you

[Applause]