Integrating vestibular displays for VE and airborne applications

Designing effective human machine interfaces is one of the more challenging and exciting issues facing engineers today. Many virtual environment (VE) designers approach this problem by examining the way humans interact with their natural environment. In essence, they have attempted to mimic the various ways humans use their senses to gather information. This approach seeks to present task relevant information in a form that is familiar, compellingly realistic, and intuitive. We have taken this design approach for the development of a direct vestibular display. We intend to provide self motion information to the vestibular system in a static virtual environment-that is, to simulate not only the look but also the feel of such sensations as turning and swaying. The article explains our rationale and method for doing so and reports results from our experiments using a visual vestibular interface.