A Virtual Reality Toolkit for Path Planning and Manipulation at Nano-scale

A virtual reality (VR) toolkit that integrates the human operator into a virtual environment by means of visual and haptic feedback has been developed to design and test manipulation strategies at nano-scale. Currently, the toolkit is capable of modeling the mechanistic interactions between an AFM tip and spherical particles on a substrate surface and generating optimum manipulation paths using a potential field approach. In addition, haptic fixtures were designed to guide the user to follow the calculated paths.