Mirage - A Virtual Reality Haptic Rendering Software Environment

ORBITEC proposes to develop haptic interface software for virtual reality simulations and assisted telerobotic manipulation. A haptic interface is a device which allows a human 'observer' to explore and interact with a virtual environment or control a remote manipulator using the sense of touch. Presently a number of commercial enterprises have developed haptic interface hardware products, but there is no vendor of haptic rendering software to support these devices. The Mirage project will use a state of the art haptic rendering technique, the constraint-based god-object method, to develop a software environment to support currently available haptic interfaces. The god-object method is the first which allows users of haptic interfaces to touch arbitrary three dimensional objects. This generality will be necessary to support the scope of applications researchers have already identified for haptic interfaces. Mirage's real-time software architecture will allow application specialists to apply haptic interface technology without being experts in the field. In addition, its object-oriented nature will allow future haptic researchers to easily develop individual components of the haptic renderer.