Design and Development of a Robust, Reliable Remote Input Device for Virtual Reality Environments

Visualization is the most important and helpful part of any scientific research activity. Almost all of the research and development requires specific and in some cases real-time visualization of the simulation. HLRS visualization department support scientists and engineers with visual analysis of the simulated data computed by high performance computers. With time the complexity and size of the simulated data set is increasing and in order to keep up with the technology, new and state of the art techniques are being utilized for data visualization. Currently the visualization department is working on a 3D virtual reality environment called CAVE which allows to simulate data sets intuitively. This virtual reality environment need some kind of control and navigation capability form humans and for this purpose a prototype of a remote device is being developed. This remote device is used to control and navigate scenes and simulation models within the virtual reality environment of CAVE. The first prototype of this remote device consists of AVR atmega micro-controller and a RF module operating at 2.4 GHz. The same set of devices is present on the receiver side as an AVR controller and a RF module which is then connected to the CAVE via USB. The main objective of this thesis work is to implement a reliable, robust and low-latency bi-directional communication protocol between multiple remote devices and a receiver device inside CAVE. Also improve the power efficiency of the remote device regarding run-time and stand-by time, redesign the remote device to support the target application with feedback to the user. In order to improve the reliability first the reliability is defined regarding our environment requirements, then various key factors which reduce the reliability are studied and their solutions are implemented and finally the implementation is evaluated. The latency will remain a key point in all of the implementations regarding robustness and reliability of wireless link. The communication protocol will be extended to handle multiple remote devices with bi-directional capability with one receiver. The goal of making the remote device maximum power efficient is investigated by exploiting the different operating modes of the RF module during the run-time and stand-by time of the remote device. Latency will remain a trade-off with power efficiency and reliability