A smooth approximation of mobile platform displacement for Mobile Haptic Interfaces

One of most interesting aspects in haptic research deals with the extension of application workspace, thus allowing haptic simulation within large virtual environments. Several devices have been realized that allow this kind of interaction, in particular our interest focuses on mobile haptic interfaces, realized by combining classic grounded haptic devices with mobile platforms. While grounded haptic interfaces feature fast sampling rate and finest quantization, mobile haptic interfaces are multirate devices where the displacement sampling of mobile platform may affect the quality of haptic rendering. In this paper we introduce a simple smoothing algorithm that allows to approximate a slow-rate and roughquantized sampled signal representing mobile robot displacement with a fast rate and smooth signal. Evaluation experiments confirmed that the proposed algorithm allows to preserve a good quality of haptic rendering.