Team:

Scott Friedman

Scott’s technical contributions consisted of the physical construction associated with the electromechanically detented joystick. With his experience in mechanical design he worked closely with the team’s sponsor in developing the new joystick design. This paved the way for the software group to have a prototype for testing.

Manager

friedman.scotta@gmail.com

Nathan Hyde

Throughout the design process, Nate worked on the research, testing, and implementation of the electromechanical components of the joystick. This included the two linear actuators as well as the force-sensing resistors. Initially, various design alternatives were explored for force sensing and linear actuation. He worked with Scott and Yongjiao to determine the optimal route through a careful analysis. Once a design plan was enacted and parts were in hand, he did some preliminary testing on the actuators to determine suitable operation voltage and speed settings. He also worked to find an ideal method to mount these components in the joystick housing. Other tasks Nate was involved with included creating a power circuit to operate the actuators above the five volts provided through the USB interface.

Lab Coordinator

hydenath@msu.edu

Yongjiao Yu

Yongjiao worked mainly on the hardware aspects of the team’s design. She contributed to research for force sensing technology, such as force transducers and FSRs, and played a role in communication with potential suppliers of design components. This process became essential in narrowing down design alternatives to choose the most effective one. She pursued several force sensing solutions before the team finally settled on using the FSRs.

Presentation Prep

yuyongji@msu.edu

Adi Mathew

Adi played a large role on the software side of the development for the joystick. He was solely responsible for developing an intuitive graphics user interface for the joystick. His background in arts and visual design was just as valuable as his programming know-how in creating a software interface that will eventually be the only software part of this project that an end user will see.  This involved large amounts of research and experimentation in order to get it right.

Document Prep

mathewadi@gmail.com

Peter Ossian

Peter’s main responsibility was the creation and maintenance of the Arduino code. This is what controlled the actuators, FSRs and pedal. Much of the work consisted of calibration, which was done through software and hardware. In this part of the project, much adjustment of the FSR force ranges was needed to provide responsive and fluid joystick movement. He kept up with maintaining functionality while developing and updating code. 

Webmaster

ossianpe@msu.edu

Robert McGough
Michael Shanblatt
Gregg Motter
Bryan Wright
Greg Mulder
Roxanne Peacock
Steven Noll
Asif Naseem
Erik Goodman
Karl Gude
All individuals who tested our keyboard user interface