Development of real-time virtual reality haptic application: real-time issues

Touch is very important to human, as demonstrated by any child who, when asking to 'see' an item, will reach out its hand to palpate and get the 'feel' of the object of interest. The ability to simulate sense of touch, using computers, has finally arrived. Human haptics is the sense of touch. Computer haptics is simulating human haptics via a device. This ongoing research focuses on developing a PC/NT based real-time, virtual reality haptic application. Our main goal is to resolve the real-time issues in order to frame a technical envelope for a stable haptic application. Some real-time issues based on scoping the applications are: 1) Interprocess communication 2) Synchronization of graphics and haptics interface and 3) finding application size limits for achieving high haptic rendering rates with stable haptic interactions.