Evaluation of Physical Simulation Libraries for Haptic Rendering of Contacts Between Rigid Bodies

Haptic rendering has opened a new range of virtual reality applications, enabling a human user to interact with a virtual world using the sense of touch. This kind of interaction enables to enhance applications such as computer-assisted design, where 3D manipulations are part of the system. However, building an application with an accurate haptic feedback is still challenging, especially for interactions between rigid bodies, where stiff contacts can only be displayed with a high simulation frequency. This paper presents the possibilities of implementation of a modular haptic display system that relies on two main components: a physical simulation part and a haptic rendering part. For that purpose, we define a generic coupling approach that enables to perform haptic rendering using admittance haptic devices, through a scaling interface that cleanly separates the physical simulation and the haptic rendering system of units. Four physical simulation libraries are evaluated with respect to haptic rendering quality criteria, based on their behavior in four discriminant test cases. We show that the proposed approach leads to a modular, generic and stable haptic application.