Stable Haptic Interaction Using the Excalibur Force Display

Creating a compelling haptic sense of immersion in a virtual environment is a challenging task for the control engineer. A haptic display must render both low impedance free-space motion and high impedance rigid constraints while ensuring stable interaction. This paper outlines a control design approach for the most common haptic display implementation, the impedance display. Two-port absolute stability criteria are used to develop explicit design bounds for virtual coupling networks which guarantee system stability for a broad class of human operators and virtual environments. The technique is applied to the Excalibur three-axis force display. The resulting absolutely stable haptic interface is the centerpiece of a Virtual Building Block simulation which emulates the behavior of LEGOTM bricks in a virtual environment.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Richard J. Adams, Daniel Klowden, Blake Hannaford
• Keywords: Compelling Haptic Sense, Haptic Display, ICRA 2000, Robotics, Virtual Environment