A position control-based approach to haptic rendering of stiff objects using piece-wise linear model

Abstract

In traditional force rendering approaches, it is quite popular to model a virtual stiff wall as a spring-damper system to compute the interaction force, which can easily lead to unstable behavior. In this paper, we present an approach to ensure no penetration into the wall by position control. The approach approximates the nonlinear model of a 6-DOF parallel-structure haptic device by a piece-wise linear model to improve the performance compared with a controller designed from a one-point linearized model in haptic rendering. A simulation-based performance comparison study shows that the new controller can render higher stiffness than the previous solution.