Touchy Feely
May 2006
Professor Rob Lindeman is heavily involved with WPI's Interactive Media and Game Development major. His Human Interaction in Virtual Environments Lab (The HIVE) investigates the sort of virtual environments that are common in computer games and in computer-based training systems.
Recently he was interviewed by Discovery Channel Canada for a piece about a virtual feedback vest he has developed. It was shown on May 26, 2006 on the Daily Planet program. The video can be found on the web at http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=5/26/2006
The TactaVest is an upper-body garment that has 16 pager motors (a.k.a. tactors) distributed at potential points of contact, such as the elbows, shoulders, and back. The intensity level of each tactor can be controlled independently over 200 levels of vibration by the computer that is also providing the graphics.
The position of the contact, relative to the game player's current view, is used to trigger different tactors, and the force of the contact is used to control the intensity of the vibration. The player wears a head-mounted display with a built-in orientation tracker that is used to control the player's view.
Maintained by webmaster@cs.wpi.eduLast modified: August 02, 2006 16:13:17