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Wearing the Teslasuit is a shocking experience

This full-body suit creates sensations on your skin so VR feels all the more real.

Lexy Savvides Principal Video Producer
Lexy is an on-air presenter and award-winning producer who covers consumer tech, including the latest smartphones, wearables and emerging trends like assistive robotics. She's won two Gold Telly Awards for her video series Beta Test. Prior to her career at CNET, she was a magazine editor, radio announcer and DJ. Lexy is based in San Francisco.
Expertise Wearables, smartwatches, mobile phones, photography, health tech, assistive robotics Credentials
  • Webby Award honoree, 2x Gold Telly Award winner
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Lexy Savvides
John Kim/CNET

I'm holding my arm out in front of me when it comes flying back toward my face.

Watch this: Trying the Teslasuit is like a shock to the system

I swear I'm not trying to hit myself in the head deliberately. I'm wearing the Teslasuit, a two-piece, full-body suit that creates sensations on my skin. Or in the case of this demo, muscle contractions that made my arm fly back involuntarily.

Teslasuit (no relation to Tesla Motors) has 64 haptic points across the body. These can simulate sensations all the way from a feather-light touch, to a hard punch. At the weakest end of the scale, it feels like a pleasant tingling on my skin. At the other end, I'm reeling from what feels like a real punch across my stomach. 

The Teslasuit can also be used as a motion-capture suit.

One of the challenges in attracting viewers to VR is that the experience still feels distant. If you encounter objects in the VR world and you try to reach out, or through them, you don't feel anything's there. Solutions like the Teslasuit, Hardlight Suit and HaptX glove are also trying to address the lack of presence in VR through touch. 

Find out more about the Teslasuit and my reactions to wearing it in the video on this page (the series is also available on YouTube).

This is an episode of Beta Test, the show that puts you in the front seat with me as I test our crazy tech products and experiences. Check back each month for a new show!