Shape Aware Haptic Retargeting for Accurate Hand Interactions

Abstract

This paper presents Shape Aware Haptic Retargeting, an extension of "state-of-the-art" haptic retargeting that is the first to support retargeted interaction between any part of the user’s hand and any part of the target object. In previous haptic retargeting algorithms, the maximum retargeting is applied only when the hand position aligns with the target position. Shape Aware Haptic Retargeting generalizes the distance computation process to instead consider the hand and target geometry. The shortest hand-target distance is then used to calculate the applied retargeting offset. This ensures the full amount of haptic retargeting is applied at the point of contact with the passive haptic regardless of contact position on the hand or target. We leverage existing geometry algorithms to implement three distance computation methods: Multi-Point, Primitive and Mesh Geometry, in addition to conventional single position approaches. These are evaluated through a set of simulated interactions instead of the single position representation used in previous haptic retargeting systems. The evaluation demonstrated all three approaches can provide improved interaction accuracy over a Point distance computation method, with Mesh Geometry being the most accurate and Primitive being the preferred method for combined performance and interaction accuracy.