CGSD — TOPIT Project

Lead Engineer

Lead engineer on the TOPIT (Touched Objects Position in Time) project — a VR and tactile-feedback reconfigurable cockpit simulator designed to keep pilots trained while deployed on Navy ships.

• Reconfigurable Cockpit Simulator — Designed and built a VR-based cockpit simulator whose visual graphics and physical control surfaces could be reconfigured to emulate different aircraft cockpits. When the display reconfigured, the physical buttons would reposition to correspond to their new virtual locations.
• Sensor Fusion & Head Tracking — Implemented the full control loop integrating magnetic, optical, and inertial tracking sensors fused via a Kalman filter to drive the VR headset's position and orientation. This was in the late 1990s, predating modern SLAM-based headsets by over a decade.
• Motor Control & Button Delivery — Engineered the motor control system driving five motors to physically reposition buttons in 3D space, ensuring they arrived at the correct location and on/off state as the user reached for their virtual counterparts.
• Tactile Feedback System — As the user reached out for a virtual button displayed through the VR headset, the system would deliver the physical equivalent — in its proper on/off state — providing realistic tactile feedback of switch actuation.
• Navy Deployment — The system was intended for use aboard Navy ships, providing a compact, reconfigurable training platform that could simulate multiple aircraft cockpits without dedicated hardware for each.

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