Teslasuit

Teslasuit
Information
Type	Private
Industry	Haptic technology, Virtual reality, Augmented reality
Founded	2013 (as Tesla Studios)
Founder	Dimitree Marozau, Serge Khurs, Sergei Nossoff
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Notable Personnel	Sergei Nossoff (CEO), Dimitri Mikhalchuk (CRO)
Products	Full-body haptic suits, haptic gloves, motion capture and biometric wearables
Website	https://teslasuit.io

Teslasuit (stylized TESLASUIT, originally developed by Tesla Studios) is a British deep-technology company that designs full-body haptic Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality wearables combining electro-tactile haptic feedback, motion capture, and biometric sensing in a single garment. Its flagship product, also called the Teslasuit, is a two-piece bodysuit whose fabric is woven with electrode channels that deliver electrical stimulation to the wearer's skin and muscles, letting a user feel sensations such as bumping into a wall, touching an object, or the impact of a punch inside a virtual environment.

The company shares no connection with Elon Musk's electric-car maker Tesla, Inc.; the name is a nod to the inventor Nikola Tesla and the suit's use of electrical impulses. After an early focus on consumer gaming, Teslasuit repositioned around enterprise and research markets, selling its hardware as a developer kit for professional training, healthcare, defense, sports science, and aerospace rather than to home users.

History

The technology was created by Tesla Studios, a company based in Scotland, United Kingdom, that incorporated in 2013 and spent roughly three years on research and development before going public. The project drew wide press attention in early 2016 around a Kickstarter campaign that launched on January 4, 2016 and offered full suits starting at 1,199 British pounds for the entry "Pioneer" tier and 2,099 pounds for the higher "Prodigy" tier, the latter adding more stimulation channels and a climate-control feature that could warm the suit to about 30 degrees Celsius. The campaign raised only a fraction of its goal and the crowdfunding effort was ultimately abandoned, but development continued.

Teslasuit re-emerged at CES 2018, where the company formally unveiled what it described as the world's first full-body haptic suit for virtual and augmented reality. At that point the suit used a 68-channel electro-tactile system and was being shipped as developer kits. A revised version shown at CES 2019 added motion capture, biometrics, and (briefly) climate control, and the product was named a CES 2019 Innovation Awards Honoree in the Virtual and Augmented Reality category. The company later dropped the climate-control element to concentrate on its haptic, motion-capture, and biometric systems.

At CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Teslasuit announced a companion haptic glove, the Teslasuit Glove, extending the platform to the hands with per-finger tactile feedback, force feedback, finger tracking, and biometric sensing. Chief executive Sergei Nossoff said at the time that the glove would reach the market in the second half of 2020 at a price of around 5,000 US dollars, again aimed at enterprise rather than consumer buyers. The company is registered in England and Wales with a head office in London, having moved on from its original Scottish base.

Leadership

In its early Tesla Studios years the venture was associated with co-founders including Dimitree Marozau and Serge Khurs. The company's leadership is led by Sergei Nossoff as chief executive officer and Dimitri Mikhalchuk as chief revenue officer, both of whom are also described as co-founders.

Technology

The Teslasuit integrates three systems into one wearable: haptics, motion capture, and biometry.

The haptic layer is built from electrode channels woven into the fabric that pass small electric pulses through the wearer's skin, a technique the company describes as electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) combined with transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) and functional electrical stimulation (FES). Rather than vibration motors, this electro-tactile approach stimulates nerves and muscles directly to reproduce a range of sensations from a light stroke to a hard impact, with the intensity safety-limited to the wearer's own strength so as not to damage tissue. Channel counts grew across generations: early suits used about 30 to 52 channels on the Kickstarter tiers, the CES 2018 model used 68 channels, and current developer kits use an 80-channel system (16 channels for each limb and 16 across the back and abdomen) operating in a 1 to 150 Hz frequency range.

The motion-capture system uses 14 Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors distributed around the suit, each combining an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer, sampling at up to 100 frames per second in either six-axis or nine-axis modes to record full-body movement. The biometry system adds optical sensing that samples at up to 200 frames per second to read heart rate and pulse-rate variability, data the company markets for stress monitoring and performance analysis.

The current suit (the Teslasuit 4 developer kit) is a two-piece jacket-and-trousers garment made of stretchable, breathable, washable textile, connected with USB Type-C cabling and powered by an external lithium-polymer power bank. It ships in a range of men's and women's sizes from XS to XXL. Content is authored through the company's software, with Control Center for calibration and a Studio creation platform, and the platform exposes an open API and software development kits with plugins for the Unity and Unreal Engine game engines.

Products

Teslasuit's catalog centers on the full-body suit and its companion glove, both sold as developer kits supported by the company's software tools.

Product	Introduced	Type	Notable details
Teslasuit (Pioneer / Prodigy)	2016 (Kickstarter)	Full-body haptic suit	Crowdfunded tiers; full suits from 1,199 GBP (Pioneer) and 2,099 GBP (Prodigy); up to 30 channels (Pioneer) and 52 channels (Prodigy); Prodigy added climate control to about 30 degrees Celsius
Teslasuit (CES 2018 / CES 2019)	2018	Full-body haptic suit	Unveiled at CES 2018 with a 68-channel electro-tactile system; CES 2019 revision added motion capture and biometrics and was a CES 2019 Innovation Awards Honoree
Teslasuit Glove	2020 (CES)	Haptic glove	Per-finger haptic display, force feedback, finger and wrist tracking, and biometrics; wireless over Wi-Fi; about 5,000 USD; targeted at enterprise
Teslasuit 4	Current developer kit	Full-body haptic suit	Two-piece suit; 80 EMS/TENS/FES channels (1 to 150 Hz); 14 IMU motion-capture sensors at up to 100 fps; biometric heart-rate sensing at up to 200 fps; USB-C with external power bank; sizes XS to XXL

Applications and market position

Teslasuit markets its wearables for high-stakes training and simulation where letting a trainee physically feel an environment is valuable: emergency evacuation, working at height, oil and fuel loading, power-plant operation, and similar scenarios. At CES 2019 the company demonstrated several such modules, including an astronaut training simulation set inside an International Space Station module in which users docked a spacecraft, moved through the station, and opened hatches while feeling haptic feedback through the suit. The glove has been positioned for adjacent uses such as professional training, sports rehabilitation, military instruction, public safety, aerospace, and healthcare, and the company has also raised possibilities like tele-control of remote systems. The company says its hardware has been adopted by dozens of research institutes across aerospace, automotive, medical, defense, sporting, and behavioral-science fields.

In the haptic-wearable market Teslasuit is generally grouped with companies such as BHaptics and Woojer, though it is differentiated by its electro-tactile (rather than vibration-motor) feedback and by combining haptics with built-in motion capture and biometrics in a single suit. Because of its high price and electrical-stimulation design, the Teslasuit has remained an enterprise and research product rather than a consumer device.