It’s happened to everyone at one time or another: You meet someone new, dutifully stick our your hand for a quick greeting, and get handed a warm-fish hand clasp in return.
Manually challenged foreign business men, with their often meek, limp, fishy handshakes, now have a means of ensuring that they shake like a “real” man while dealing with their western counterparts. Insodal, a New Jersey based tech company, has come up with it’s own remedy for turning sad hands into glad hands, called Energotic Suxessful Gluvvz, or ESG for short.
The glove, a robotic, slip-on superhand, gives users the ability to instantly assimilate into any culture’s handshake paradigm by first pinpointing the user’s location with a military-grade GPS-type locator, says company president, Chinese immigrant Isaac Saacsmorton. An appropriate, preset location-based program is then loaded into the glove’s computer processor, activating pressure sensors and servo motors to provide the optimal hand clasp, shake duration and entusiasm-based up-down motion. “Our motion-guided laser technology locks in on the oncoming hand, and guides it to its target, giving the best possible shake in any given situation, wet or dry,” says Saacsmorton.
Existing pre-loaded programs include those for the Middle East, Caribbean and European nations, not just Asia.
Insodal researchers claim that weak shakers can wear the right-handed prosthetic-assist glove at all times even though it is mainly designed for use during business hours. It is also recommended for Saturday and Sunday mornings when users might encounter a business contact at a Starbucks, for example. “It’s a sort of training wheels for your hands.” Saacsmorton says. “I wouldn’t recommend wearing it when you’re going to the bathroom though,” he cautions. “At least not in the beginning.”
Saacsmorton came up with the idea after a trip to Viet Nam where he says that he constantly came in contact with flaccid-fisted shakers. “It was epidemic, culturally speaking. I had to coach these guys on how to squeeze my hand so as not to freak out Americans,” said Sacsmorton. “I know this from first-hand experience; I was the worst culprit until someone took me aside and showed me the right way to shake. The ESG can guide them through the whole process. Easy.”
The Insodal ESG was voted “sexiest robotic glove” at the 2013 CES convention in Las Vegas. There are, as of now, no women’s gloves.