The use of a proximity agent in a collaborative virtual environment with 6 degrees-of-freedom voxel-based haptic rendering

The extension of software designed primarily for a single-user haptic environment to a multi-user collaborative environment presents challenges on several fronts. This paper discusses the use of a proximity agent to overcome problems associated with the time allowances for collision detection and subsequent force/torque generation between pairs of dynamic objects in a voxel-based collaborative haptic environment.