Face it: many augmented reality glasses are confusing to use with their crazy-quilt touch inputs to perform multiple tasks.
UltraSense Systems, based in San Jose, CA, focuses on ultrasound and multi-modal user interfaces and lately believes it has tackled the problem of gesture overload for users of AR glasses.
As augmented reality glasses catch steam (actually, it’s a market “tsunami,” according to UltraSense) to become the next big compute platform, OEMs are ramping up work to manage multiple inputs and needs, including the display, media in the display, calls, camera and AI assistants. All must work in a tiny, but fashionable form factor, something that companies like Google, Apple, SNAP and Orion have noticed. But early generation products have heavily relied upon capacitive strips on the glasses that have limited usability.
To help, UltraSense on Wednesday announced a next-gen UltraTouch AR2 Interaction Platform, USG4000 Series, a human-machine interface controller for augmented reality glasses. The platform combines ultrasound, capacitive and force sensing to “deliver reliable, intuitive controls across magnesium, titanium and plastic frames,” UltraSense noted in a press release.
UltraSense CEO Mo Maghsoudnia told Fierce the platform is being sampled to customers with production for second half 2026. Pricing will be driven by volume of sales.
“We worked with customers to bring about the best customer experience—ultimately this is what matters. These learnings from our customers enabled us to the enhance and optimize UltraTouch,” he said. All the issues in AR glass have one challenge, he believes: how to deliver a simple, reliable experience at the same time the system gets more capable and frames get thinner with magnesium and titanium.
He claimed UltraTouch has the “only seamless user interface solution in the market today.” To address gesture overloading, “more user inputs are necessary” which can be achieved by Ultra multi-modal sensing capabilities from force to capacitive to ultrasound fusion sensing.
For greater scale-up of AR glasses, fashionable frames with magnesium or titanium are necessary instead of bulky plastic, he added.
Capacitive inputs are considered problematic because wet hair, sweat, and incidental contact can create false triggers. Also, running display, media, calls and camera with current generation multi-finger gestures on a 2D capacity pad is not intuitive for mainstream customers, UltraSense said. And, today’s capacitive-only glasses don’t work well with magnesium and titanium frames, which has prevented development of the fashion glasses that consumers demand.
Instead, UltraSense has a 1D zone-based approach called CapForce with Force Fusion that features a co-polymer layer to add force sensing to capacitive inputs to reduce false triggers while adding minimal thickness to the glasses.
UltraForce for metal frames enables seamless interaction in magnesium and titanium while CapForce covers plastic temples. Both approaches support soft buttons, sliders and press depth.
Different regions of the frame have dedicated jobs: calls are accepted or rejected with volume adjustments via a metal slider and tactile button at the tip; camera, both photo and video, are triggered via a short slider or tactile dome near the hinge or tip with light or a hard press; media and display navigation for play/pause and skip, scroll, select and back are done via a side temple slider or pad that relies on CapForce or UltraForce.
In summary, UltraSense works by combining location, gesture type and level of force to create a command vocabulary without requiring the multi-finger gestures of other glasses. Only 1D gestures with one finger are needed. The intent is to lower gesture overload and boost reliable connections.
The platform also detects when glasses are worn or off and can work with other devices like smart rings and wristbands for more control.
A single material-agnostic chip under 5mm thick fuses ultrasound, capacitive and force to solve false triggers and eliminate gesture overload on fashionable AR glasses with low power operation, Maghsoudnia said.