Development of an immersive training vest

Teams of students across four semesters have serially designed subsystems to be integrated into a cohesive immersive training vest system for military applications. The vest enhances the ability to provide realistic and real-time feedback on both battlefield effects (e.g. weapons fire) as well as performance information (e.g. correct/incorrect cultural response). The integrated system provides improved capabilities for real time training performance feedback though the following technology development efforts: robust zigbee wireless mesh networking, composite plate-mounted tactor motors for haptic feedback, hand/arm gesture tracking, and indoor location tracking. These technologies have been developed and tested as subsystems and are being integrated into a mock training facility at Missouri S&T for up to 15 individual trainees. The system development has been undertaken by an interdisciplinary student and faculty team relying on expertise in Systems Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. The system was primarily developed as an applied exercise for a series of two introductory graduate-level courses for Systems Engineering. Thus students followed a comprehensive design process; from requirements derivation, functional analysis, guided trade studies, interface control, etc. towards a final detailed design. The students were personally mentored by faculty and PhD students, as well as industry mentors from the Boeing Company through a structured three phase design review process. Students applied analytical tools for system optimization and simulation to derive design parameters and estimate system performance against technical requirement thresholds. Currently, the subsystems have been prototyped and tested to meet functional requirements and the full integrated system is expected to be completed by May 2012 and will begin design validation at that time.