Haptik is a component-based open-source library which provides a Hardware Abstraction Layer for access to haptic devices. Different hardware from different manufactures can be easily accessed in a uniform way, allowing to remove from applications all dependencies on particular configurations of APIs, hardware and drivers.
Haptik is not tied to any particular graphics, physics or collision-detection SDKs, and has been designed to be user friendly, even with complex existing applications or within 3rd party software frameworks. It can be effortless integrated with both procedure or class based code, allows for either polled or callback-based access, and supports both right-handed (OpenGL) and left-handed (DirectX) coordinate systems.
Haptik consists of runtime-loaded plugins and therefore can be easily extended and customized. Moreover differently from many existing libraries its component-based architecture guarantees both backward and forward binary compatibility of compiled client applications with old and future versions of hardware devices, drivers, plugins and the library itself. This is obtained while still keeping the maximum performance achievable using directly devices native SDKs.
Haptik is not only for C++ users and can be used from many languages and environments such as Matlab and Simulink as well as Java applets and applications.
Take a look at the Overview Section for a more detailed description.

If you use Haptik for one of your scientific works please cite it as:
M. de Pascale and D. Prattichizzo "The Haptik Library: A Component Based Architecture for Uniform Access to Haptic Devices" IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 64-75, Dec. 2007

Supported by Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena through the project "Studio della Mano Umana con Metodologie Robotiche per Applicazioni in Neuroscienze e Riabilitazione" 2006-2008.