SenseGlove

SenseGlove
Information
Type	Private company
Industry	Virtual reality, Haptics, Robotics
Founded	2017
Founder	Gijs den Butter, Johannes Luijten
Headquarters	Rotterdam, Netherlands
Notable Personnel	Gijs den Butter (co-founder), Johannes Luijten (co-founder)
Products	SenseGlove DK1, SenseGlove Nova, SenseGlove Nova 2, SenseGlove R1
Website	https://www.senseglove.com

SenseGlove is a Dutch company that designs and manufactures wearable force-feedback and haptic gloves for virtual reality, professional training, research, and robotics. Its gloves let a person feel the size, stiffness, and resistance of virtual objects by combining finger tracking, vibration motors, and brakes that physically stop the fingers from closing.

The company began in 2017 as a graduation project by Gijs den Butter and Johannes Luijten at the Delft University of Technology, where the first prototype was conceived as a rehabilitation device for stroke patients before the team refocused on VR training and telerobotics. SenseGlove sells to enterprise and research customers rather than consumers, and it states that its products have been used by more than 500 organizations across about 50 countries, including Volkswagen, Honda, Scania, Airbus, the European Space Agency, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and the Royal Netherlands Army.

History

SenseGlove started in 2017 as a student project at the Delft University of Technology. The founders' first prototype was aimed at hand rehabilitation for people recovering from a stroke, but the team moved toward virtual reality and remote robot control after concluding that the technology had broader commercial use there. The company's first commercial product, the SenseGlove DK1 (development kit 1), was a hand exoskeleton sold mainly to researchers and developers.

In 2021 SenseGlove introduced the SenseGlove Nova, a lighter, wireless glove using soft fabric and magnetic brakes in place of the DK1's rigid exoskeleton, aimed at enterprise VR training. In April 2023 the company raised 3.25 million euros (about 3.5 million US dollars) in a Series A round led by the Dutch venture firm Lumaux, bringing its total outside investment to roughly 5.5 million euros. SenseGlove said it would use the money to grow its Nova business, develop new hand-haptic products, and open an office in the United States.

SenseGlove announced the second-generation Nova 2 in 2023 and began worldwide shipping in 2024, adding a palm-feedback feature to the finger force feedback of the original. In late 2025 the company extended beyond VR into robotics with the SenseGlove R1, an exoskeleton glove developed under the codename Project Rembrandt for controlling and teaching humanoid robots.

The company was founded in Delft and later moved its headquarters to Rotterdam, in the Netherlands.

How the gloves work

SenseGlove's gloves combine three kinds of feedback with finger tracking. Force feedback uses one passive magnetic brake per finger that resists the cable running along the finger, so when a user grips a virtual object the glove stops the fingers from closing further, simulating the object's stiffness. Vibrotactile feedback uses small vibration motors to convey textures, clicks, and impacts. Finger tracking measures how far each finger bends, which positions a virtual hand and triggers the feedback at the right moment.

The gloves do not track their own position in a room. SenseGlove relies on third-party tracking hardware for hand position, such as HTC Vive trackers or the controllers of a Meta Quest headset, attached to the wrist. Developers integrate the gloves through SenseGlove's own software, which includes plug-ins for the Unity and Unreal Engine development environments and native SDKs, with a desktop program (SenseCom) handling device communication.

Products

Product	Year	Type	Notes
SenseGlove DK1	2018	Wired exoskeleton glove	First commercial product; rigid hand exoskeleton with 1 degree of freedom of force feedback per finger, vibrotactile feedback, and finger tracking; sold to researchers and developers; used by the winning team in the 2022 ANA Avatar XPRIZE
SenseGlove Nova	2021	Wireless soft glove	Lighter, wireless redesign using fabric and magnetic friction brakes; aimed at enterprise VR training; sold for about 5,000 euros
SenseGlove Nova 2	Announced 2023, shipping 2024	Wireless soft glove	Adds palm (active contact) feedback to the finger force feedback; priced around 5,999 euros (about 6,000 US dollars)
SenseGlove R1	2025	Robotics exoskeleton glove	Codename Project Rembrandt; built for teleoperation and imitation learning with humanoid robots; about 40 degrees of finger tracking and a 1,000 Hz control loop

Nova 2 specifications

The Nova 2 is SenseGlove's main VR product as of 2026. It applies force feedback to the thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers (the little finger is linked to the ring finger), with up to 20 newtons of resistance per finger, which SenseGlove compares to the weight of a 2 kg object pressing on each finger. The active contact strap across the palm tightens by up to about 5 mm to simulate holding a tool such as a drill or hammer, or to convey a handshake in multiplayer applications.

Specification	SenseGlove Nova 2
Force feedback	4 magnetic brakes (thumb, index, middle, ring); up to 20 N per finger; 100 force steps
Palm feedback	Active contact strap, tightens up to about 5 mm, up to 20 N
Vibrotactile feedback	4 linear resonant actuators (around 180 Hz)
Finger tracking	6 sensors; thumb, index (two sensors), middle, and ring flexion plus thumb abduction
Connectivity	Wireless via Bluetooth (Bluetooth 4.2 / Bluetooth Low Energy)
Position tracking	External, via HTC Vive trackers or Meta Quest controllers
Battery	Lithium-ion, about 3,490 mAh; roughly half a day of intensive use
Software	Unity and Unreal plug-ins, native SDKs; Windows, Linux, Android

Sources differ on small details such as exact battery capacity and refresh rate, with SenseGlove's own documentation and retailer listings giving slightly different figures.

Role in virtual reality and augmented reality

Standard VR controllers and optical hand tracking let a user point at and select virtual objects, but they cannot make a virtual object feel solid: a hand passes through it, or closes on empty air. SenseGlove's gloves address this by physically resisting the fingers when they meet a virtual surface, which is the main reason the products are used for VR training where the realism of a grasp matters. SenseGlove markets the Nova line for hands-on simulations such as assembling parts, operating machinery, and using hand tools, and the company reports that it works with manufacturers including Volkswagen, Honda, and Scania for workforce training.

Because the gloves rely on external position tracking from headsets such as the Meta Quest or systems using HTC Vive trackers, they are an add-on to an existing VR setup rather than a standalone device. Beyond training, SenseGlove products are used in research on touch and presence, and in telerobotics, where an operator's hand movements and grip are mapped onto a robot. In November 2022, Team NimbRo from the University of Bonn won the 5 million US dollar grand prize in the ANA Avatar XPRIZE telepresence competition using SenseGlove DK1 gloves to control their avatar robot.

The robotics work led to the SenseGlove R1 in 2025. Aimed at humanoid robots rather than VR, the R1 captures both a person's hand motion and the force they apply and translates them into control signals for robotic hands, for teleoperation and for collecting demonstration data used in imitation learning. SenseGlove says the R1 offers about 40 degrees of finger tracking, millimeter-level tracking accuracy, and a 1,000 Hz control loop, building on the experience from its VR gloves.

Current status

As of 2026 SenseGlove is privately held and based in Rotterdam, with the Nova 2 as its current VR glove and the R1 as its robotics product. The company continues to focus on enterprise, research, and robotics customers rather than the consumer market, citing use by more than 500 organizations worldwide.