New Approaches for Integration: Integration of Haptic Garments, Big Data Analytics, and Serious Games for Extreme Environments

Haptic garments present new opportunities to increase realism in gaming. As Real As It Gets (ARAIG) is a new form of haptic garment that uses muscle stimulation, vibration, and 7.1 surround sound to provide a new level of realism in gaming. The integration of new haptic garments like ARAIG with big data analytics and serious games presents new opportunities for more realistic virtual training that has application in many domains. In particular, there is great potential to support repeatable virtual training for extreme environments. In 2016, the IEEE Life Sciences Technical Community worked across the IEEE Societies to demonstrate this interdisciplinary nature, with a focus on solving life science problems in extreme environments. This article is based on our keynote address at the International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE)-Berlin in 2016. It provides an example of this interdisciplinary case study research in action.