Toward Volume-Based Haptic Collaborative Virtual Environment with Realistic Sensation

In this paper, we propose a volume-based realistic com-munication system called Haptic Communication that al-lows participants to interact in real-time with others at re-mote 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 repre-sented 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 vi-sual 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