Seattle-based startup Haptx has announced it has secured another $12 million in funding to further develop its glove hardware.

This round of funding — which brings the total amount raised by Haptx thus far to $19 million — came from Mason Avenue Investments, Taylor Frigon Capital Partners, Upheaval Investments, Votiv Capital, Keiretsu Forum, Keiretsu Capital, NetEase and Amit Kapur of Dawn Patrol Ventures.

The glove hardware in question — known simply as ‘Gloves’ — was developed by Haptx in the hopes that it would be a major attraction to the virtual reality (VR) and gaming industries.

Gloves works by pumping air into the hardware from a series of tubes to simulate the sensation that the wearer is actually holding the object they see when in a VR environment. There are also 130 feedback points located throughout the gloves and an exoskeleton to provide resistance against the wearer’s fingers, meant to simulate the sensation of closing them around a solid object.

Because of the failure of the virtual reality industry to catch fire in the commercial sphere, Haptx has moved away from marketing itself as a VR-only company, expanding into robotics. It sees its Gloves hardware as a solution framed by real-world input and output.

Haptx also announced a partnership with Advanced Input Systems which will see them collaborate on “product development, manufacturing, and go-to-market.”

Source: TechCrunch