10145499Smart Wristbands for Accurate Hand Tracking and Unlocking the Sense of Touch in Extended RealityClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKThe virtual and augmented reality (extended reality, XR) market is growing rapidly, with over 28 million users worldwide, but traditional gaming controllers limit interaction as they prevent users from engaging naturally with their surroundings. Our wristbands solve this problem by allowing people to use their hands and feel virtual objects, breaking the boundaries between virtual content and the real world. Fether Labs creates smart wristbands that track hand movements and provide a sense of touch in XR. Our technology is groundbreaking, being the first to demonstrate individual finger tracking with more than 99% accuracy and unnoticeable latency. This innovation enables users to interact intuitively with their environments, making the virtual experience truly immersive. Our innovation opens new opportunities in various fields, including education, healthcare, robotics, and defence. By listening to stakeholders in the XR market, we identified XR training as our beachhead. Our technology addresses an unmet need for immersive, hands-on learning experiences. By partnering with XR studios, we enable them to enhance their training content by providing realistic interactions and a sense of touch. This not only increases the effectiveness of dexterity-focused training programmes but also improves engagement and retention rates among learners. For enterprise customers, our technology allows for safer and more efficient training, leading to apter employees and reducing costs associated with in-person methods by more than 50%. By offering these transformative benefits, we will help position UK-based XR studios as leaders in the growing market for advanced training solutions. This 12-month project aims to de-risk the technology from TRL-6 to TRL-8 and validate the business model to attract private investment and scale production. We have defined five work packages: commercial team formation, product design and certification, XR studio partnerships, investor readiness, and project management. This project will enhance our competitiveness by tailoring our value proposition to the needs of XR studios, ensuring our product not only delivers a groundbreaking user experience but is also easy to integrate into their workflow. Fether Labs' innovation boosts the XR supply chain by driving demand for headsets, components, and logistics. This project enhances the UK's competitiveness in the gaming and creative industries clustered across the UK, including Brighton Pavilion, Guildford, Warwick and Leamington, Liverpool Riverside, Bristol West, and Dundee West. This project aligns with the UK government's industrial strategy to enhance productivity and workforce training, and our advanced AI algorithms support the government's goal to strengthen the AI sector.