: The Active Chair Project

The Active Chair Project is looking at creating a stong integration between real and virtual spaces for participants. The use of the Active Chair facilitates a reinforcement of the virtual experience and through a tightly coupled systems integration, augments interactive entertainment.

The chair is driven by three pneumatic cylinders with variable air speed and pressure controllers and has been explicitly designed to provide the degrees of freedom sufficient for the project while maintaining a limited level of overall engineering complexity.

The following technologies are investigated and incorporated in the project:

• Proprietary USB plug-n-play interface for PC/MAC/etc
• 45 degree inclination of pneumatic pistons to minimize the horizontal displacement error to a negligible level.
• Constrained 1-degree of rotation at base of cylinder mounts and universal joint at top mount allows simple and effective range of motion
• Steel rectangular section with leather covered foam and plywood sections. The foam has varying densities to ensure user comfort.
• Angle of inclination was based on holding the occupant in a minimal-stress posture.
• Three legged base with adjustable feet for use on uneven surfaces (old wooden floors in MLE)
• Suspension action of three legged base for shock absorption

For more information, see the publications listing.