On accelerating a volume-based haptic feedback algorithm

The importance of haptic feedback is recognized by an increasing number of researchers in the virtual reality field. Recently, a volume-based haptic feedback approach has emerged. The approach samples the intersection volume between objects through the three axes in 3D space to render an accurate interaction force among objects. This paper presents a method to reduce the complexity of the volume-based force feedback algorithm. The core of the proposed algorithm is sampling the intersection volume between two objects only once rather than three times. For the other two axes, a penetration pair reconstruction algorithm is developed to generate the required information from the sampled result. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can increase the frame rate of the volumetric haptic feedback algorithm by a factor of over two. The resulting force error is modest compared to the original volume-based haptic feedback. This proposed algorithm may also be applied to accelerate other volume-based applications, e.g. volume based force interaction between colliding deformable objects in virtual reality simulation. Moreover, the algorithm requires no pre-processing, and is thus well suited for simulations where object topology is constantly changing, i.e. cutting, melting or deforming processes.