A New Zealand wearable sensor technology firm is to double its Edinburgh office headcount as it plans to extend its operations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
StretchSense – which has spent over a decade developing a best-of-class motion capture glove – is seeing growing market demand for extended reality (XR) training, which allows organisations to immerse staff in simulated environments.
The flexible sensor specialist will increase its number of staff to over 10 by the end of the year as it sees growth in sectors including medical, healthcare, industrial, engineering, automotive, energy, law enforcement, and emergency services.
Sajeewa Dayaratne, StetchSense CEO, said: “Our glove and wearable tech are the gateway but the real value is in the data and intelligence this tech generates. We see motion intelligence improving human performance, safety, and productivity in the real world, and with almost limitless application.”
“StretchSense is on track to becoming a data and AI driven motion intelligence company, and our Edinburgh base is integral to this evolution. Next steps include expanding our existing partnerships with OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and others to extend our wearable sensor tech into other forms of hardware, platforms, devices, and environments.”
The Auckland-headquartered firm recently launched its Realty XR Train Glove, manufactured by Taiwan-based TPK Holding Co, which also manufactures touch-based technology hardware for Apple and Tesla, and is also now a shareholder in StretchSense. The overall virtual training and simulation market is projected to reach around US $950 billion by 2030.
Mike Riley, executive chair of StretchSense, said: “Because of TPK’s shareholding in StretchSense, we have been able to work alongside TPK to develop the Reality XR Glove to be accessible and scalable, with a price point that enables large-scale adoption at enterprise level. We’re actively engaged in trials with a series of big name brands, and we’ll be stepping up this engagement over the next few months.”
Currently selling at just under £300 per pair, StretchSense has significantly reduced the price of its motion capture glove, which has primarily been used by major movie and games studios worldwide to date, including 8 of the 10 biggest games developers worldwide.
StretchSense raised a £6.9 million investment led by Par Equity alongside GD1 and Scottish Enterprise in 2022, a further round of £5 million in 2024 that involved the same investors and Oberon Private Ventures, and embarked on its latest investment round this month.
Riley added: “Investors see the market opportunity for a product company dedicated to solving the challenge of uninterrupted immersion in high stakes XR training simulations to improve training effectiveness and real-world performance in mission critical and often hazardous environments. From our Scotland base, we’re developing the machine learning and integration software stack that supports our hardware and sensor technology designed in New Zealand. We continue to be impressed with the ecosystem here, from the talent coming out of the universities, to the support we’ve received from Par Equity and Scottish Enterprise.”
StretchSense’s software studio in Edinburgh is led by head of software and machine learning, Odin Taylor, and the company expects to double the size of the team in Scotland from 5 to over 10 by the end of the year.
