Lim and his team were awarded the IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award 2022 by the Institution of Engineers, Singapore, as well as the third prize in the ShanghaiTech Innovation and Entrepreneurship Summit 2023 International Session on Biomed for their ‘HaptGlove’ project. The HaptGlove was developed under Lim’s Haptics Enhanced Medical Training in Extended Reality project and is a lightweight glove that offers users both skin-like and movement sensations when interacting with a virtual object. Existing technologies in the space have not yet been able to offer users a realistic sense of touch. The HaptGlove contains one haptic feedback module on each finger allowing users to sense the shape, size and stiffness of a VR object. Such realistic VR has applications in medicine and education–offering surgeons the opportunity to prepare for an operation in a hyper-realistic simulation.

(Photo: National University of Singapore)