The Haptic Group research is addressed towards several themes dealing with Virtual Reality and its applications. Our main interest focuses on developing and testing experimental Visuo-Haptic rendering algorithms and on studying perceptual phaenomena which characterize the interaction with a virtual environment. In the following, the main research activities developed at SIRSLab by the Haptic Group are reported. For more details about a project, please click on the picture or on the project title.
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Animating a 3D biomechanics-based hand avatar in haptic grasping In this research the target consists of modeling a 3D avatar of user’s hand, which can be animated in Virtual Reality using commercial haptic devices such as the Omega or the PHANToM, featuring a single contact point per finger. The hand avatar will get deformed during contacts with virtual objects, eventually deformable too. |
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Libralis - Autocalibrated Gravity Compensation In this research line, the target is studying general algorithms to setup an autocalibrated algorithm for gravity compensation. The algorithm is based on iterative estimations performed directly on the device of interest, then it is able to account for hardware customization and to work for any desired orientation in which the device has been displaced. Please visit the Libralis Web page |
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FP7 RoboCAST Project The ROBOCAST project aims to develop ICT scientific methods and technologies which focus on robot assisted keyhole neurosurgery. A modular master-slave tele-manipulation system will be developed. The slave system will integrate 2 robots and one active bio-mimetic probe, able to cooperate among themselves in a biomimetic sensory-motor integrated framework. The master interface (SIRSLab WorkPackage) allows the surgeon to remotely control the probe motion and provides the force-feedback. |
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Augmented Kinesthetic feedback Common single-contact-pont force-feedback devices generally cannot convey local tactile feedback to the fingertip receptors, as it usually happens in real object manipulation. In this research, the target consists of designing new contact models for kinaesthetic stimulation in order to augment information that can be conveyed to user’s sense of touch during virtual manipulation tasks. |
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Grasp Analysis The grasp problem is a topic that has attracted considerable scientific attention, ranging from robotics, virtual reality, psychophysics and rehabilitation. The aim of this research, is the study of grasp stability, defining a set of contact forces that satisfy grasping constraints and formalizing grasp like a minimization problem. |
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Bringing Haptics to Second Life This project is aimed at exploring the possibilities that haptic technologies can offer to multiuser online virtual worlds, to provide users with an easier, more interactive and immersive experience. An haptics-enabled version of the Second Life Client, supporting major haptic devices, has been developed. Two main haptic-based input modes have been added to the original viewer which help visually impaired people to navigate and explore the simulated 3D environment by exploiting force feedback capabilities of these devices. |
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Establishing IEEE/RAS Points of Presence and Initiatives in Second Life The project “Establishing IEEE/RAS Points of Presence and Initiatives in Second Life (SL)”, realized thanks to the contribution of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, consists of setting up a permanent location in this virtual environment, in the form of a building, with poster-like material and videos presenting the aim and services of the IEEE/RAS. A further objective of this project is that of reproducing in SL simplified behaviors of real world robots and auto-responding desk assistants. |
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Voronoi Based Collision Detection for Haptics The V-GRAPH is a framework for bounded time collision detection of point-like haptic interactions. It is based on an ad-hoc partitioning of space which makes its running time independent from mesh properties like number of vertices and triangles. The framework effectively works with haptic rendering of multimillion triangles meshes such as those used for virtual museum. |
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GPU-Friendly Local Deformations This is a method for modeling realistic dynamic local deformations, which has been designed to be executable also on the GPU. |
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The Haptik Library Haptik is a small opensource library providing a simple yet powerful API for low level access to haptic devices from multiple vendors. It also allows to use haptic devices within Matlab, Simulink and Java, as well as other scripting languages (like Python, for instance). |
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Haptic Digital Watermarking Digital Watermarking is widely used to embed unperceptible signatures into media data such as audio files, images and also 3D meshes. The target of this study is that of embedding watermarks in data, triangular meshes, perceivable with haptic devices. |
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Mobile Haptic Interfaces Mobile Haptic Interfaces consists of a force-feedback device mounted on a mobile robot. Mobile base allows to enlarge the limited workspaces of commercial haptic interfaces. The global effect of immersion inside virtual reality is highly enhanced by the possibility to indirectly stimulate vestibular apparatus, thus involving also user’s sense of orientation in the simulation. |
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Virtual Grasping In Virtual Grasping simulations, the human hand interacts with force-feedback systems composed by multiple 3DoF single-contact-point haptic devices, one per finger. This allows to simulate interaction via two contact points (pinch grasp) or three contact points (tripod grasp). |
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Interactive Fluid Simulation Interaction with fluids is very frequent in our everyday lives (as an example, when we stir a cup of coffee in the morning). This research arises in order to allow users to interact with virtual fluids through an haptic device as well as an interaction with virtual rigid or deformable objects. An haptic simulation usually needs updating rates about 1 KHz. That’s why it is necessary to find a method to make the computation of the force perceived by the human operator as fast as possible. |
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Modular robot: application to grasping
We are working on new applications for modular robots; Since now almost all the research in Modular robot was on locomotion and self-reconstruction; we introduce two new tasks: Task Oriented modular grasping and Motion Oriented modular grasping. * In cooperation with TAMS group, Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg, Germany |