6-DoF Haptic Rendering of Static Coulomb Friction Using Linear Programming

Simulating frictional contact between objects with complex geometry is important for 6-DoF haptic rendering applications. For example, friction determines whether components can be navigated past narrow clearances in virtual assembly. State-of-the-art haptic rendering of frictional contact either augments penalty contact with frictional penalty springs, which do not prevent sliding and cannot render correct static friction, or uses constraint-based methods that have difficulties in meeting the stringent haptic loop computation time requirements for complex geometry. We give a 6-DoF Coulomb friction haptic rendering algorithm for distributed contact between rigid objects with complex geometry. Our algorithm is compatible with the fast point vs implicit function penalty-based contact method such as the Voxmap-PointShell method. Our algorithm incorporates the maximal dissipation principle and produces correct static friction, all the while inheriting the speed of penalty-based methods. We demonstrate our algorithm on several challenging 6-DoF haptic rendering examples.