US Army to get a wearable haptic navigation device in Buzzing belt

The research team of the U.S. Army has developed an innovative haptic navigation device that can be tied up with the torso of a soldier to guide him through proper ways in hectic missions. The belt vibrates when its wearer needs some directional guidelines on his path. The navigation tool wonderfully replaces the regular GPS system, which obviously steals the armymen’s concentration off the surroundings.

Buzzing Belt

Because of these huge shortcomings of GPS device, Elmar Schmeisser, who leads the Army Research Office in North Carolina, sat to develop an enhanced alternative. It was like a challenge before Schmeisser when he started working on the project. He got associated with several companies to develop the stunning navigation device.

Armymen will need to wear this device around their torso. The tool comprises of a set of vibrating tiny electric motors called tactile actuators, or just ‘tactors’. There will be eight tactors to signify maximum possible cardinal directions on a device. Each of the tactor will have separate functionality.

"The tactors will vibrate once the wearer is expected to move towards one side", said Linda Elliott, a psychologist, who has been working with Schmeisser to test the device. It was tested at the Army Research Laboratory at Fort Benning in Georgia. The armymen were given enough guidelines to use the navigation device. Under the hood, the device sports a usual GPS, an accelerometer and a digital compass.

Apart from directional purposes, tactors can be used to pass particular messages to the soldiers in the war field. Commands can be transmitted to soldiers from the base through the special movements of the tactors. For example, front, back and side tactors will pulsate at a time to instruct a soldier to halt. Similarly while the tactors will pulsate entirely from back to front to ask a commando to move out.

Via: NewScientist