Inspiration
When thinking about the future of technology, we thought that VR controllers were lacking in their flexibility and caused a dissonance between the game and the player. While brainstorming how to fix this we came up with the idea of a glove that kept track of the fingers, joints, and palm to create a more lifelike experience which could be used from a household mouse to a lifesaving device..
What it does
The glove (as a prototype) uses a raspberry pi as the base for information processing, and a single accelerometer/gyroscope to track movement and rotations within the glove. The glove then sends the data to the animation in unity where it updates with the movements of the user.
How we built it
We wired the accelerometer to the raspberry pi and then used a python code to read the data that the accelerometer collected. We used a server to constantly update the movement data to unity to allow the program to maintain the same motions as the user with as small of a time lag between motions and display as possible.
Challenges we ran into
The first challenge we encountered was learning hardware and how to wire the accelerometer to the device. The lack of a monitor cause a huge amount of difficulty as we struggled using the Mhacks hackerboard. When we finally managed to get one, we switched to the Raspberry Pi which was the more familiar option and increased our ability to manage all of the information necessary. The last few challenges we've encountered is getting the animation to work properly as well as getting the server to communicate with the clients in a steady manner.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Fixing the sensitivity of the accelerometer to reduce the amount of unnecessary data that was being transmitted. Managing to get the raspberry pi to facilitate the data provided by the accelerometer and get all of the internal workings settled.
What we learned
We learned quite a bit about sockets and server communication. The biggest thing we learned, however, was about how to wire an accelerometer and the difficulties that come with it.
What's next for AccelRo
The next step for AccelRo is getting more sensors into the glove for more precise movements and adding another glove for more immersion into the content.
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