Haptic interface development using a hardware-in-the-loop experimental setup

The interaction between the human operator and a virtual environment can be significantly enhanced by a haptic interface. The implementation of a haptic interface requires to account for the dynamics characteristics of the interface components. In this paper, haptic interface development and testing are analyzed using hardware-in-the-loop experimental setups. Two setups are presented, 1DOF and 3DOF. The paper presents issues regarding HIL implementation of haptic interfaces using a nonlinear force feedback from a virtual environment. The results are relevant for the characterization of the performance and the limits of the haptic interface implementations.