This haptic shirt shocked me at CES and I'm not sure I hated it

techradar.com:

You and technology are the only reasons I'd endure being shocked by a haptic shirt at CES 2023.

I visited OWO on the floor of CES to try out the company’s new haptic sleeves for which it won a CES innovation award. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that those somewhat less radical wearables weren’t ready to test. No, OWO had its second skin haptic shirt, which is basically a Lycra t-shirt with wires craftily sewn into it, ready to go.

Company CEO Jose Fuertes explained to me that the shirt doesn’t do pressure-based haptics. Instead, it delivers low-power electrical pulses to muscles in your stomach, back, arms, and chest to simulate a wide range of physical effects. The company is in talks to license the technology with most of the major gaming studios.

With the shirt on, you could feel a knife sticking into your chest or a bullet entering your stomach and exiting your back. You could feel the recoil of a shotgun. This is what Fuertes promised. Naturally, I was intrigued, even more so when I learned that the $399 (€399) second skin haptic shirt was only in a relatively few hands, as the product doesn’t officially ship in the US and Europe until February.

I wanted to try it. I mean, I thought I did.

OWO reps directed me to a privacy booth where I could remove my shirt and undershirt. The shirt’s very sticky electrodes need skin contact to work.

They measured my chest but when put on second skin I found it incredibly tight. They told me a tight fit was best. With effort, I zipped up the front. Then someone from OWO placed a slightly bulky battery pack in a pocket near my midsection and added a contact to each arm and zipped the sleeves closed, as well.

The shirt offers nine parameters of electrical waves based on an