Development of an Interface to a Spacecraft Simulator empowered by Virtual Reality

Abstract

Due to its large territory, Brazil relies on space systems to perform a myriad of supporting activities. Space systems design requires strong modeling and simulations techniques for achieving high performance. This article describes the development of a goal-driven user interface (UI) for spacecraft distributed simulations using a service oriented paradigm and supporting different space missions. From usability problems with traditional simulators UIs, described by satellite subsystem design engineers, this work proposes three dimensional visualization, natural interaction techniques, virtual and augmented reality as well as interaction with touch-screen and gesture recognitions. This research uses an open source C/C++ toolkit, designed to provide interactivity, networking and scripting capabilities for simulator developers, this facilitates in providing specific input or output driver engines. Finally, some further developments are described for future work.