Week 1

The introduction of the project

Our group, will use the some computer applications such as UNITY, MAYA and the knowledge about software engineering to study the Indoor Positioning and the Somatosensory feedback. In order to make the project’s more interesting, the project is developed in the form of VR computer game. The VR computer game combing the virtual world with reality world, which will be made by our group in the next few weeks, is a shooting game with scenes, plots, heroes, weapons and monsters. Through applying to the mobile phone VR glasses, the game can bring more sense of reality to the player. At the same time, the player can move in the square enclosed by the four iBeacons and the position of the player will be calculated by the iBeacons. Then the four iBeacons will transmitted the position information to the game and mobile in time to achieve indoor positioning. In the game, the player can wear our designed clothing and attack the monsters using the weapon. However, the player also can be attacked by the monster. If it is attacked in the game, it will experience the damage of different parts of the body through the somatosensory feedback program.

The experimental principle

The principle of somatosensory feedback is that once the damage on the player receives at a certain part, the program sends a different message and transmits it to the Arduino component via Wi-Fi. The information will be decoded and the vibration motor that controls the non-partition will judge whether it is vibrating through different signals. For example, if the protagonist receives an attack from an enemy and is hit by the left arm, the software on the phone will accept this unique signal and only vibrate the vibration motor of the left arm.

At the same time, the player can move in the square enclosed by the four iBeacons and the position of the player will be calculated by the iBeacons. Then the four iBeacons will transmitted the position information to the game and mobile in time to achieve indoor positioning.

The equipment of the project

In this project, we need one Arduino board with Wi-Fi transmission board ESP8266，4 iBeacons，twelve vibrating tablets，a Bluetooth gamepad，an Android phone and a lot of wires.

The objective of the first week project

At the first week, our group wants to solve the problem of the somatosensory feedback program. More specifically,the computer is operated as server and the mobile phone acts as the client. Through using the application on the mobile phone, the vibration of the vibrator connected with Auduino board can be controlled accurately. 

The process of the first week project

The first step solved the problem about which method was chosen to achieve that the computer transmitted the signal to the Arduino. Because the Arduino did not have the network function, the other equipments which help the Ardunio to connect the computer were indispensable. On the one hand, we can using serial port to transmit the signal. On the other hand, the additive module about the network to the Arduino was also a favourable component to complete the function. Fortunately, the ESP8266, a low-cost Wi-Fi microchip with full TCP or IP stack and microcontroller capacity, was founded and used to transmit the signal.

The next step was pretty straight forward to implement. According the requirement of the component, the Arduino board connected with the ESP8266, was connected with the vibrator through using the Dupont wires. The circuit is shown in Figure 1 as following.

Figure 1: The circuit 

Subsequently, after completing the assembling work, several corresponding program was developed by us to achieve transmitting the signal without wires. The code of the Ardunio is presented as following.

Figure 2: The code of the Ardunio(1)

Figure 3: The code of the Ardunio(2)

Figure 4: The code of the Ardunio(3)

The application on the mobile phone was developed by the unity and C. It was divided into two sections, server and client. In this project, the computer was the server and the mobile phone, ardunio were the clients. The main responsibility of the computer, acting as a server, was to process the data sent by the mobile phone and broadcast the corresponding command to the ESP8266, which made the Ardunio perform corresponding operations according to the instruction. The interface of the server is shown as following.

Figure 5: The interface of the computer 

As for the client, the main responsibility was communicating with the server. The interface of the client is shown as following.

Figure 6: The interface of the client

In order to give a more comprehensive understanding of the first week project, a video is shown as following.

Conclusion of the first week

In the first week, our team mainly solved the problem of the somatosensory feedback plan. More specifically, the computer operates as a server and the mobile device acts as a client. By using the app on your phone, you can precisely control the vibrator connected to the Auduino board. At first we were unable to transmit signals via Wi-Fi, only wired transmission via the interface, but in the end, we successfully achieved wireless transmission through unremitting efforts. At the same time, our team realized the vibration of different parts by receiving different signals.