A haptic virtual environment for industrial training

This paper presents a haptic virtual environment application for industrial training. A choice of haptic devices. (PHANTOM and CyberForce/CyberGrasp) is used to perform a training exercise with the possibility of sharing virtual scene states with remote users to allow collaboration and remote observation. Furthermore, the application employs video textured avatars to improve face-to-face communication, a novel area of interest management mechanism to reduce network bandwidth usage, standard encoding of state updates for compatibility and is used in conjunction with various projection technologies such as a head mounted display, CAVE configuration or regular PC monitor. The paper serves to underline the various components needed for the development of a haptic virtual environment and our experiences in doing so.