A Research about Drive a Submarine

People who enjoy diving has been increasing recently. However to play this kind of sport, much experience about the sea and diving is necessary. On the other hand, virtual reality technique is recently developed, which is applied to many kinds of field such as building construction, industrial design, and medical care. This paper describes a newly developed driving submarine system by using virtual reality technique. Through the submarine, everyone can enjoy diving without actual jumping into water. To recognize how fast and where the testee was swimming, the position and direction information of the sensors which were wore on testee's hands was used. The output signal to motors of the submarine was adjusted according to the gesture information. In this method, the motions of the submarine were reflected in the skill of testee's swimming. People who use this system, watch the underwater video image sequence obtained from the camera attached to the submarine, and then behave like swimming. They can use the variation of body gesture to control the submarine where they like to go. This time the proposed system was evaluated. The submarine was controled by swimming gesture as testee had expected.

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