Development of a velocity ellipse navigation algorithm in virtual environments using force feedback

In this paper, a 2 DOF haptic yawing joystick for use as the navigation input device in virtual environments is introduced. The haptic yawing joystick can perform a 360°_range yawing motion and ±100°_range pitching motion. The device can support weights of up to 26N along the x axis and 10N along the y axis with 10kHz of sampling rate. For the haptic yawing joystick, an ellipse navigation algorithm using the user's velocity in the virtual navigation is proposed. The ellipse represents the velocity of the user. The ellipse size changes according to the velocity of the navigator. Since the path width in a navigation environment is limited, the ellipse size also become limited. The ellipse navigation algorithm was tested in 2 dimensional virtual environments. The test results showed that the average velocity of the navigation controlled by the algorithm is faster than that controlled without the algorithm.