Fluid Reality
About
About Fluid Reality
Fluid Reality’s fingerpad uses electroosmotic actuators to vary pressure against the skin across a thin tactile surface. The array can reproduce localised contact, edges, textures and changing forces without the bulky pneumatic or motor mechanisms used in many haptic gloves. The company reports response times around 15 milliseconds and 128 pressure levels in a module approximately six millimetres thick.
A teleoperation system maps contact measured at the robot hand into patterns applied to the operator’s fingertips. This lets a person feel whether an object has been touched, is slipping or is seated during insertion while continuing to control the robot visually. Fluid Reality supplies development hardware and integration interfaces for research, VR and humanoid manipulation, with production-scale glove systems still under development.
Team
- Joe Mullenbach - Co-Founder and CEO - Leads commercialization of Fluid Reality's fingerpad haptic arrays for teleoperation and dexterous manipulation workflows.
- Craig Shultz - Co-Founder and CTO - Drives the technical path for Fluid Reality's electroosmotic haptic glove hardware.
- Roger Reinertsen - Materials Science - Works on actuator materials and the chemistry behind million-cycle lifetimes.
- Gabriel Beutel - Mechanical Engineering - Works on moving the company's hardware from laboratory prototypes to shippable kits.
- Ed Colgate - Advisor - Advises Fluid Reality on work connected to collaborative robotics and haptic interaction.
- Chris Harrison - Advisor - Advises the Carnegie Mellon spinout on human-computer interaction and haptics.
- Bob Dobkin - Advisor - Advises Fluid Reality.
Research
- CMU publishes Fluid Reality haptic glove work
2024-04-04 - Research Publication - The glove uses electroosmotic pumps to actuate 32 pressure pixels on each finger pad. The system fits battery and Wi-Fi equipment on the hand and wrist. CMU said Fluid Reality had spun out into a startup focused on fingertip actuators.
Source
Timeline
Events
- 2025-07-15 - Award - Fluid Reality wins NSF SBIR award for robotic touch haptics
NSF award 2507634 is listed at $304,991. Project covers compact haptic actuators using electroosmotic pumps. The award is distinct from the existing CMU research-publication event for Fluid Reality haptic gloves.
Source - 2024-04-04 - Research Publication - CMU publishes Fluid Reality haptic glove work
The glove uses electroosmotic pumps to actuate 32 pressure pixels on each finger pad. The system fits battery and Wi-Fi equipment on the hand and wrist. CMU said Fluid Reality had spun out into a startup focused on fingertip actuators.
Source
Context
Comparable profiles
- WEART
stack adjacency - Robotics Data Capture · Haptic Teleoperation
- Dexta Robotics
stack adjacency - Robotics Data Capture · Haptic Teleoperation
- CONTACT CI
stack adjacency - Robotics Data Capture · Haptic Teleoperation
- CyberGlove Systems
stack adjacency - Robotics Data Capture · Haptic Teleoperation
- Jiiov / 极豪科技
stack adjacency - Robotics Data Capture
Context tags
- Haptic teleoperation - Capability - Fluid Reality sources describe haptic teleoperation for robotics or robot-adjacent manipulation systems.
- Robotics data capture - Stack Layer - Fluid Reality sources describe robotics data capture for robotics or robot-adjacent manipulation systems.
- Humanoid tactile feedback - Capability - Fluid Reality sources describe humanoid tactile feedback for robotics or robot-adjacent manipulation systems.