Iris Dynamics Linear Motors / 6 DoF Kit

I was looking back into these guys to see what they were up to and they have morphed again using their motor and control technology. Posted about them here before because of their force feedback yoke Kickstarter and then their force feedback sticks that can simulate virtually anything depending on configuration in their control software. Gated shifters with virtual gates, etc. Now they are making pretty amazing linear motors perfect for 6 dof setups and they have a 6 dof “kit”.

https://irisdynamics.com/products/raven/

And have a bit to say about subtracting motion platform motions from head motions.

https://irisdynamics.com/vr_training_entertainment/

I don’t find prices but I’m sure they are significant, but looks like extremely fast, essentially silent, and have motor logic and configurability out the wazoo. The motors can simulate vibrations on top of motions too.

Hey Zed, thanks! (I'm from Iris).

Re pricing: it does depend a bit but yes, they are still on the expensive side. We have "kits" (motors, controllers, and reference mechanical design) from ~50K and going down to ~25K in volume. We do occasionally do assembled platforms as well (and I think for human sized systems we are quoting something like ~60K-100K depending on options) Motors themselves (in single unit pricing) are $3900 to ~$5K (depending on motor size, stroke length, and a few other options.) All with some major price brakes at volume.

At the moment the kits are really targeted at OEMs building "application specific" motion platforms for things like training, equipment stabilization, lab use, etc.

We have a bit of a write up for how we do IKM & FKM here. But ya, essentially you get a nice and snappy data stream into unity/whatever with the platforms position being resolved on an embedded FPGA which is also where you can play around with washout, cueing etc. It has pre-built acceleration cueing & washout models if you just want to get up and running but if you have your own models you're developing you can totally use those as well (either on the FPGA, or with directly streamed position data if you really want to get into the weeds).

Since they are all direct drive and have onboard controllers, and since we are doing this all on an FPGA we can process frames WAY faster than "most" people are able to throw data at it (I think we are at ~4kHz currently when using onboard processing). Total latency is also <2ms so (we think) its a pretty ideal platform for anyone doing research into motion sickness, etc. We are pretty confident in saying this is probably the fastest, lowest latency, and most accurate human scale platform out there.

Promo clip: .

And another obligatory clip of a motor: https://youtube.com/shorts/nBjKPJhKw2g?feature=share

Happy to answer any questions!

Thanks for the reply and links, @WalkerYYJ! Sorry it took so long to reply. Your motors look amazing and check so many boxes. Two big ones for me are noise levels and speed. The price is a rough one, though.

Is Iris looking at a lower cost line that maybe isn’t quite as capable except for maybe weight/load? That direct drive technology is very seductive but I can’t justify it at the prices you mentioned except maybe the large volume pricing. Ever run sales?

A small, quiet 6 dof platform would be amazing for my purposes.

Hey, just curious about conventions here- when it says "heave 277mm", is that +/-277 from a neutral point, e.g. 554mm of total travel? Or 277 mm of total travel?

I had to think about that. Pitch I would assume to be +/- 21 deg from level, 42 deg total travel. But I don't have a feel for the linear axes convention