Haptic Feedback for a Virtual Explosion

The sense of touch forms an intrinsic part of our real world experience and is naturally associated with physical exploration and contact. Virtual Training (VT) Systems have successfully trained the Warfighter for several years by immersing the participant in a realistic simulation of the actual battle-space and combat environment. Current VT applications rely on providing realistic visual imagery and some level of surround sound audio. It is well known that our perception and world model is shaped by an integration of visual, auditory and somatosensory stimuli in an automatic process known as sensory integration. Thus a technology gap exists in that haptic and tactile stimuli is not adequately provided in current VT systems. This project aims to develop haptic feedback to simulate virtual explosions for indoor virtual training systems; specifically, the force felt from debris strikes from an IED explosion and / or the force felt by a bullet strike. The objective of this Phase I effort is the design and demonstration of a proof-of-concept actuator for producing remote haptic stimuli. We will investigate approaches where the characteristics of the drive and actuator are configured to produce various sensory effects in a safe and effective manner.