Pendulum finds virtual soulmate
Graduate student Vadas Gintautas and adviser Alfred Hubler have created the first linked virtual/real system by coupling a real-world pendulum with a virtual version whose movements are controlled by equations of motion. In their "mixed reality" system, the two pendulums swing as one. This work was one of four papers selected from all APS journals for their monthly media "tip sheet."
To get the two pendulums to communicate with one another, data about the motion of the real pendulum is fed to the virtual one, and information from the virtual pendulum is transferred to a motor that affects the motion of the real pendulum.
Mixed reality can occur only when the two systems are sufficiently similar, but a system having unknown parameters could be coupled to a virtual system whose parameters are set by the experimenters. The unknown variables in the real system could then be determined by adjusting the virtual system until the two systems shift from dual reality to mixed reality, enabling good estimates for the values of the unknown parameters. Read the paper...