FOS Future Lab: Inside Extending Reality — feel what a robot feels

12th July 2026

James Day

There is a queue of inquisitive minds young and old in the Extending Reality zone at FOS Future Lab presented by Randox waiting, mostly, to play Connect 4. Their opponent is a robotic hand fitted with TouchLab's electronic skin, and nearby, a visitor wearing a haptic glove feels every counter drop as if the fingers were their own.

"I just really enjoy watching people's faces light up when they first feel ‘whoa, I can feel what the robot's feeling’," says Charlie Cameron, an embedded engineer at the Edinburgh-based robotics company.

Demonstrations range from stacking blocks to gripping fruit without crushing it, but the serious applications are in places humans can't safely go. TouchLab's sensors let a robot know "whether it can operate a tool, turn a valve, go into areas that humans aren't really able to go, like hazardous environments and COVID wards," Cameron explains. The point of the games, though, is the bigger one: "Robots can no longer just be in a box. They can actually start engaging with humans safely."

If TouchLab extends your hands, Sony Europe extends everywhere else. Having digitally captured Goodwood’s Tyrrell Shed with its XYN spatial technology, Sony invites visitors to step inside the famous building in extended reality, and to see how the film industry now conjures whole worlds on demand. "We could put someone in front of the screen and create an environment that looks like they're really in the environment," says channel manager Chris Couzens.

The stand is a playground of extended senses. One screen lets you rotate a 3D object — a camera, a shoe, at one point a toy dog — without ever touching it. "They don't touch the screen. They just move it," says Couzens. "The clever software, which is like the glue that brings all of these things together, is XYN.”

Arguably the strangest extension here, though, is inward. Emotiv's wearable EEG headsets read real-time brain activity, and in a special debut at FOS Future Lab, its Brain Art activation transforms those signals into personalised digital artworks — your neurons, hung in a gallery.

With healthy queues forming, word has definitely spread across FOS Future Lab. "One lady did the brain scan thing, and she was talking about the memories of the piece of music she picked," reported OLO Robotics' Eleanor Tang-Smith from the Intelligent Systems zone. "That was just fascinating."

Fittingly for a zone about expanding minds, this is also home to the Festival of Speed's STEM programme, designed to turn 11-16-year-olds' curiosity into career ambition. This year the STEM Lab welcomes Creative Hut, guiding younger visitors through hands-on challenges built around FOS Future Lab's Moon exploration theme, while the Goodwood Education Trust's seminars for secondary schools have been running through the weekend.

Which brings things back to Connect 4. You think you are playing a game, but TouchLab believes it is training the teleoperators of the future, and everyone leaves having touched something through a machine.

Cameron sees no reason motorsport won't feel it next — "the motorsport industry is already one of the most automated industries in the world" — and as for the rest of us? "In five years' time everyone will be depending on robots for cooking." You heard it at Goodwood first.

Randox is a global leader in diagnostics, revolutionising patient outcomes through innovative technologies, including its patented biochip technology. This pioneering diagnostic platform allows for the simultaneous detection of multiple biomarkers from a single sample, delivering faster, more accurate, and comprehensive results. Operating in over 145 countries, Randox develops advanced laboratory instruments, high-quality reagents, and innovative testing solutions to improve global healthcare.

Randox Health brings this cutting-edge technology directly to individuals, offering bespoke, preventative health testing programs. With world-class laboratories and personalised health insights, Randox Health enables early detection of a wide range of conditions, helping individuals take control of their health.

Together, Randox and Randox Health are redefining diagnostics and preventative healthcare. For more information, visit www.randox.com and www.randoxhealth.com.

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Photography by Charlie Brenninmeijer.