Stable Haptic Interaction with Virtual Environments Using an Adapted Voxmap-PointShell Algorithm

Despite a lot of research in recent years stable and realistic haptic interaction with virtual environments keeps an unsolved problem. Among different approaches the Voxmap-PointShell (VPS) method seems very promising due to constant sample rates, independent of the static environment. But there is still the stability problem to be solved globally. In this paper some adaptations based on the VPS are presented, including the dynamic object modeling and the force calculation method, to reduce the distractions of the calculated collision forces to increase stability. The PointShell points lie exactly on the surface of the dynamic object, to get a smoother surface representation. A variation of the collision force calculation leads to a reduction of the “voxel noise”, that appears due to the discretization of the volume space. A design framework for the virtual coupling is presented, that enables the automatic configuration for different haptic devices. The validity will be shown with different kineasthetic hand controllers.