A Haptic Assembly and Disassembly Simulation Environment and Associated Computational Load Optimization Techniques

Abstract

There exist a large body of work in the field of assembly, sometimes involving the use of a virtual environment to assist the user in assembly analysis. Typically, these environments limit the user’s interaction with the environment to one sense, sight, and two dimensions, the table upon which the mouse rests. The introduction of a haptic interface into the computer-aided design environment allows users to incorporate both a third dimension and a second sense, that of touch, into their work. In this paper, the development of an application called HIDRA (Haptic Integrated Dis/Re-assembly Analysis) is discussed, which integrates haptic feedback into an assembly/disassembly simulation environment. In particular, the focus is on the computer architecture developed to support such haptic simulations and the methods that have been created to meet some of the application time constraints unique to haptic simulation. Although focused on assembly and disassembly simulations, these issues and developments are relevant for the broader development of haptically enabled simulations in general.