Design, Sensing, and Control of a Scaled Wind Tunnel for Atmospheric Display

Creating wind within virtual environments (e.g., wind display) is a challenging problem with a potential to develop immersive atmospheric display for virtual reality systems. This paper describes synergistic mechatronics design, sensing, and control of a scaled active wind tunnel, which establishes a practical foundation for atmospheric display in virtual environments. Our approach combines numerical simulations and physical experiments in order to achieve geometric design of the physical system while simultaneously developing simplified control laws using limited sensing and computational resources. As experimental results indicate, several physical modifications and unique sensor and control law developments are necessary to achieve controlled wind flow in a physical system. These results validate system performance over a wide range of wind speeds and angles, which serves as a basis for future development of full-scale virtual reality systems with atmospheric display.