Haptic-based interactive path planning for a virtual robot arm

In this paper, based on the structural similarity between the PHANToM haptic device and a six-DOF (Degrees of Freedom) articulated robot arm, a six-DOF virtual robot arm driven by the PHANToM device is modeled. In order to enable the virtual robot arm to haptically interact with virtual prototypes in a virtual assembly (VA) environment, a workspace mapping method based on robot kinematics analysis is proposed. The haptic-based virtual robot arm is used in interactive modeling in free path planning and constraint-based assembly path planning operations in the VA system. In both planning processes, the user can interactively edit an assembly path with the guiding forces as feedback. Lastly, A few experiments have been conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods. The haptic-based virtual robot arm presented in this paper provides a new human-computer interaction method for a VA system.