Development of a Following-Type Force Display for the Virtual Catch-Ball System

In our previous study, a virtual catch-ball system was designed. The virtual catch ball system consists of pitch ball, catch ball and Head Mounted Display (HMD) subsystems. For the catch ball subsystem, the force display of simple structure, large movable area, high safety and low cost is required. Some kinds of force display systems were already proposed by other researches so far. However, the motion range of those force displays is considerably small, or the large mechanical parts are necessary to attain enough motion space. In this study, the authors proposed a following-type force display for the virtual catch-ball system. The force display consists of a force unit, a rotary motion unit and a vertical motion unit. The proposed force display can generate the force in the different directions of the vertical and the horizontal plane, and the merits of this system are large motion range, high safety and low cost. The performance of the proposed force display is demonstrated by several basic experiments.