Full-Body Haptic Simulation

Current immersive virtual environments provide the participant with realistic representations of many of the senses, including sight, sound, and even smell. However, they do not provide the ability for the participant to feel the environment. There are existing haptic-based products that can solve part of this problem (such as force feedback joysticks), but no product meets the diverse needs of adding the complete ability to feel to a simulator. In order to accommodate a realistic sense of touch, the system must provide tactile information (such as textures), thermal information (hot/cold), and applied forces. In order to be operationally compatible with training simulators, the system must be unobtrusive and untethered. Finally, in order to provide for the most usability, the system must be capable of supplying this sense of touch over the participant's entire body. Currently, no system exists that can meet all of these requirements. Cybernet has extensive experience in the development of haptic systems and PC-based simulations (including training simulations that integrate force feedback). Cybernet proposes to leverage our experience in these areas to create a design for a system capable of producing the required sense of touch.