A Sub-world Coupling Scheme for Haptic Rendering of Physically-based Rigid Bodies Simulation

In the virtual reality context, the use of haptic rendering as an additional se nsory modality significantly improves the degree of realism of virtual worlds. The physical realism of the intera ction between the user and the objects of the virtual world is particularly important when dealing with contact or collis ion between rigid objects as, for example, in assembly tasks. The high frequency rates required for smoo th manipulations are often difficult to reach, in particular for rigid bodies simulations. Hence, we propose a new coupling scheme based on a dynamic subset of the virtual world, a localized Haptic Sub-World, running at a higher freq uency than the rest of the virtual world. This Sub-World, located around the virtual object manipulated by the user , is synchronized with the virtual world through a dynamic analysis of the interface between the two subsets. Using th is coupling scheme in our software environment, we are able to achieve high frequency haptic rendering usin g sophisticated simulation methods on virtual worlds with a large number of rigid bodies.