Toward Volume-Based Haptic Collaborative Virtual Environment with Realistic Sensation

In this paper, we propose a volume-based realistic communication system called Haptic Communication that allows participants to interact in real-time with others at remote locations on the network in haptic perception (sense of touch) of soft objects in virtual environments. To provide sense of touch at remote locations in real-time we construct the system as follows. At first virtual soft objects are represented by adaptive volume model in the PCs at the remote locations. Next, from the parameters of positions and forces at contacting points transmitted via network, at each PC the reflection force of the soft object is calculated rapidly and accurately. Eventually, as a result the haptic and visual information are rendered by means of a haptic device PHANToM and a volume graphic software at the PCs. We investigated the efficiency of our system via experiments on a simulation of needle insertion with high force feedback rates at remote locations on a WAN between Ritsumeikan University, Biwako, Kusatsu Campus and Osaka University, Toyonaka, Campus. The experiment results show that the delay due to network traffic is negligible.