Six Degree-of-Freedom Haptic Rendering Using Voxel Sampling

A simple, fast, and approximate voxel-based approach to 6DOF haptic rendering is presented. It can reliably sustain a 1000 Hz haptic refresh rate without resorting to asynchronous physics and haptic rendering loops. It enables the manipulation of a modestly complex rigid object within an arbitrarily complex environment of static rigid objects. It renders a short-range force field surrounding the static objects, which repels the manipulated object and strives to maintain a voxel-scale minimum separation distance that is known to preclude exact surface interpenetration. Force discontinuities arising from the use of a simple penalty force model are mitigated by a dynamic simulation based on virtual coupling. A generalization of octree improves voxel memory efficiency. In a preliminary implementation, a commercially available 6-DOF haptic prototype device is driven at a constant 1000 Hz haptic refresh rate from one dedicated haptic processor, with a separate processor for graphics. This...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: SIGGRAPH
• Authors: William A. McNeely, Kevin D. Puterbaugh, James J. Troy
• Keywords: Computer Graphics, Haptic Refresh Rate, Haptic Rendering, SIGGRAPH 1999, Voxel-scale Minimum Separation