Voxel-Based 6-DOF Haptic Rendering Improvements

Abstract

An approach is presented for realizing an order-of-magnitude improvement in spatial accuracy for voxel-based 6-DOF haptics. It trades constant-time performance for greater spatial accuracy. This helps to make 6-DOF haptics applicable to extraordinarily complex real-world task simulations, which often admit no other known solution short of physical mockup. A reduction of haptic fidelity is tactically incurred but simultaneously mitigated by augmenting standard voxel-sampling methodology with distance fields, temporal coherence, and culling of redundant polyhedral surface interactions. This is applied to large-scale haptic scenarios involving multiple moving objects and to collaborative virtual environments.