Ethereal Matter MEK · via Studio Alloy

A Full-Body Haptaic Game Controller

Designed the embedded electrical stack for the MEK - a full-body robotic haptics platform for VR with force-feedback armatures and foot platforms - delivering three custom control boards running bespoke firmware.

Role

Electrical + Firmware Lead

Applied

Custom PCBBLESensor IntegrationFirmwareC++RoboticsEmbedded Systems

Objective

The MEK delivers full-body haptics for VR - force-feedback armatures the user holds and foot platforms they stand on. Making that work means a coordinated set of embedded boards: low power and wireless at the hands, force-aware and lit at the armatures, and motion-controlled at the feet.

Ethereal Matter MEK - product render showing full platform unit, white frame with force-feedback armature mechanism and seating position, person silhouette inside — FIG 01The MEK full-body VR haptics platform - the complete unit with force-feedback armature and active foot platforms.

My contribution

Designed the complete embedded electrical stack for integrating motion control and feedback with the game engine.
Delivered three custom PCB families: low-power BLE hand controllers; armature control boards integrating load-cell sensing and lighting control with a BLE receiver; and foot-platform motion control boards.
Wrote all embedded firmware across all three board families.

Ethereal Matter MEK physical unit - white frame enclosure with force-feedback armature mechanism visible inside, Ethereal branding on side panel — FIG 02The physical MEK unit set up at a tech demo.

Technical Details

Three board families divide the system. The hand controllers are low-power boards with several switches for user interaction within the game engine. Each controller was designed to maximize battery life drawing only a few milliamps when active.

The armature (wrist) boards integrate three triangulated load-cell used to calculate the 3 dimensional force the user applies to the handgrip. They connect wirelessly to the handgrips to read the button inputs and charge level of the controllers and passes that along with the load data to the computer running the game engine. The armatures also have a vibration motor and LED strips that are controlled by the wrist boards. They are triggered by in-game events that the game designer can call.

The foot-platform boards handle motion control underfoot. It controls three states: grounded, stair stepper, and balance mode. These foot-platform states are also callable by ingame events.

Ethereal Matter MEK in use - person wearing VR headset interacting with the lit force-feedback armature inside the full platform unit — FIG 03The MEK in use.

Ethereal Matter MEK armature close-up - lit force-feedback arm with a hand interacting with the end effector — FIG 04Armature close-up - wireless hand controllers mounted to a gimble on the end of each arm.

Challenges

The most difficult part of this project was managing the communication protocals between all devices. At its most complex, handgrip button signals would be sent over BLE to the wrist boards, the wrist boards would add that data into a data structure to send the computer over serial, and the computer ran a custom script that translated the serial data structure from serial to a package readable by the game engine.

For demonstrations, all of the systems had to be functional independent of the game engine, so I also developed a custom script that would allow the entire device to be controlled through keyboard shortcuts.

Development gallery

Ethereal Matter MEK - Battery SOC calculation — 01Output of python script used to optimize the SOC look up table for the handgrip battery. Manufacturer SOC curve was run through a highpass filter then the derivative was used to define linear regions.