Springhead: Open source haptic software for virtual worlds with dynamics simulations

We developed an open source haptic software library named Springhead for virtual worlds with dynamics simulations. Combination of haptic interfaces and dynamics simulations realizes intuitive manipulations and realistic virtual worlds. It is useful for many applications such as virtual prototyping, educations, and entertainments. Many force display devices and dynamics simulators has been developed. Few systems, however, employ both dynamics simulations and haptic interfaces. Haptic interfaces require very fast update rate for control. Integrations of haptic interfaces to dynamics simulators for computer graphics are not easy. Therefore, we developed a dynamics simulator for haptic update rate. We believe there are many applications and we hope to spread this technology as soon as possible. We decided to provide it as an open source haptic software for virtual worlds with dynamics simulations.