I am the controller now: MIT engineers have created a 'second skin' that could one day track whole bodies in VR

Engineers at MIT have made a flexible sheet full of optical fibres that can digitally rebuild its own shape as it bends and folds. The team thinks it could one day become a garment that mirrors your real movements in a VR game. A demo showed the sheet still working after being punched with holes. Light passing through the fibres is read by a special algorithm. The team says the sheet tracks shape with an error of less than 0.4 centimetres.

Motion capture usually tracks a few fixed points on a suit, which misses much of how the body moves. This new material senses the shape of a whole surface instead. Earlier waveguide sensors were mainly used on robot arms to measure a single curve. The MIT team is now working to make the fibres far thinner, thinner than a human hair. VR and virtual-tuber fans are seen as likely early users.

Better body tracking could one day make VR games, virtual avatars and physical therapy more natural and accurate.