On the Development of a Programmable Inertia Generator

This paper presents a preliminary investigation on a one-degree-of-freedom programmable inertia generator. An inertia generator is a hand-held haptic device that has a programmable inertia. By moving internal masses in reaction to accelerations induced by the user, the effective intertia of the device is modified in order to render a prescribed perceived inertia. In this paper, a one-degree-of-freedom device with one internal moving mass is proposed. The dynamic modelling of the system is first presented. Then, a controller is designed to produce the appropriate motion of the internal mass in reaction to the acceleration induced by the user. A prototype is presented and experimental results are discussed.