Seriously thinking about rudder w/ "electronic spring"

I have had this idea for over 4 years. But I have finally start thinking about it now and started to collect parts for it. The concept stage is not finalized yet, but it's quite close.

I love and hate force feedback. I would love to have FFB but I hate their current phony feel. On top of that Immersion has some over board patent on it and is not shy about suing others for it. Ask Sony!

So, the basic concept is that I just want a electronically controlled "spring." This is so that I can curve it and damp it. This involves no computer, so avoiding Immersion's patents. The original idea was to use a linear induction motor controlled by an embedded processor. There are obviously two parts to this. 1. A physical "motor" and electronic driver. 2. An embedded controller & firmware to control it.

The 2nd part is part of the reason why I wrote Hempstick -- can do shit about it with existing firmware/controller.

But the first part requires me to prototype a linear induction motor starting from winding magnet coil and build a custom electronic driver for circuit for it..... This is why it's been 4 years and I have not started construction of it.

However, recently, I came up with a rudder mechanism that will allow me to use a DC motor to "perhaps" achieve similar result (although will not be as good as a linear induction motor, but it would be probably 90% there, good enough). This would allow me to use off the shelf DC motor and drivers.

We will see how this turns out and then decide whether FFB will be a worth while pursuit.