Haptic Sculpting Research Articles

Special Issue: Advances in Computer Aided Manufacturing

Special Issue: Advances in Computer Aided Manufacturing

A 6-DOF haptic interface and its applications in CAD

In this paper, we propose a new general 6-DOF haptic interface, which is able to provide both force and torque feedback to point clouds, NURBS curves and surfaces and rigid heterogeneous material virtual representations. A feature of this approach is the haptic cursor, which has a shape and size, instead of just a point. We also present two CAD applications based on that haptic interface; an experimental haptic sculpting system for B-spline surfaces and a haptic-based method to draw a NURBS curve upon a point-based model. By taking advantage of our haptic rendering techniques, various haptic sculpting tools are developed to facilitate sculpting B-spline surfaces, resulting in more intuitive virtual sculpting paradigms. To draw a NURBS curve upon a point-based model is normally a difficult problem. However, this problem can be solved with relative ease using our haptic interface.

Haptic sculpting of multi-resolution B-spline surfaces with shaped tools

In this paper, we first propose an implicit surface to B-spline surface haptic interface, which provides both force and torque feedback. We then present a new haptic sculpting system for B-spline surfaces with shaped tools of implicit surface. In the physical world, people touch or sculpt with their fingers or tools, instead of just manipulating points. Shaped virtual sculpting tools help users to relate the virtual modeling process to physical-world experience. Various novel haptic sculpting operations are developed to make the sculpting of B-spline surfaces more intuitive. Wavelet-based multi-resolution tools are provided to let modelers adjust the resolution of sculpture surfaces and thus the scale of deformation can be easily controlled. Moreover, sweep editing and 3D texture have been implemented by taking advantage of both the wavelet technique and haptic sculpting tools.

Haptic B-spline Surface Sculpting with a Shaped Tool of Implicit Surface

AbstractIn this paper, we propose a new implicit to B-spline surface haptic interface and present a new haptic sculpting system for B-spline surfaces with a shaped implicit surface probe/tool. In the physical world, people touch or sculpt with their fingers or tools, instead of just manipulating points. A shaped virtual haptic probe/tool helps users to relate the virtual deformation process to their real life experience. Using the PHANToM haptic device, modellers can touch and explore the model with a shaped probe/tool and feel the physically realistic presence of virtual objects. Various basic haptic sculpting tools are developed to facilitate the deformation of B-spline surfaces. The tool-model interaction is surface-object in nature instead of traditional point-object style. This leads to more intuitive virtual sculpting paradigms, which may help introduce new modeling techniques.

Dexel-based force–torque rendering and volume updating for 5-DOF haptic product prototyping and virtual sculpting

This paper presents new techniques of Dexel-based force–torque rendering and volume-updating for haptic virtual sculpting of complex surfaces with a developed 5-DOF (degree of freedom) haptic interface. In the proposed methodology, 5-axis tool motion and analytical tool swept volume are formulated for updating the virtual stock material, which is represented with the Dexel volume model. Based on the tool motion analysis, a Dexel-based collision detection method and a force–torque feedback algorithm are proposed for virtual sculpting. A lab-built 5-DOF force–torque output haptic interface system is developed for the proposed haptic sculpting system. With the proposed methodology, a user can virtually sculpt a volume stock to get an intuitive design by using the haptic interface. From the haptic sculpting system, both the corresponding tool motion of the creative process and the sculpted model can be recorded and output. The output STL models of the haptic sculpting system can be processed for machining planning. Based on the proposed techniques, hardware and software implementation of the haptic sculpting system as well as the illustrative examples are also presented in this paper.

A Visibility Sphere Marching algorithm of constructing polyhedral models for haptic sculpting and product prototyping

This paper presents a Visibility Sphere Marching algorithm of constructing polyhedral models from Dexel volume models for haptic virtual sculpting. Dexel volume models are used as the in-process models representation during interactive modification in a haptic virtual sculpting system. The stock material represented in a Dexel volume model is sculpted into a designed model using a developed haptic sculpting system. The sculpted Dexel volume models are converted to polyhedral surface models in STL format by the proposed visibility sphere marching algorithm. The conversion turns out to be an interesting and challenging problem. The proposed visibility sphere marching algorithm consists of three sub-algorithms: (i) roof and floor covering, (ii) wall-building, and (iii) hole-filling algorithms. The polyhedral surface models converted from the Dexel volume models can then be input to and processed by available computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) or rapid prototyping systems. The presented technique can be used in virtual sculpting, CAD/CAM, numerically controlled machining verification and rapid prototyping.

A novel haptics-based interface and sculpting system for physics-based geometric design

Conventional geometric design techniques based on B-splines and NURBS often require tedious control-point manipulation and/or painstaking constraint specification via unnatural mouse-based computer interfaces. In this paper, we propose a novel and natural haptic interface and present a physics-based geometric modeling approach that facilitates interactive sculpting of spline-based virtual material. Using the PHANToM haptic device, modelers can feel the physically realistic presence of virtual spline objects and interactively deform virtual materials with force feedback throughout the design process. We develop various haptic sculpting tools to expedite the deformation of B-spline surfaces with haptic feedback and constraints. The most significant contribution of this paper is that point, normal, and curvature constraints can be specified interactively and modified naturally using forces. To achieve the real-time sculpting performance, we devise a novel dual representation for B-spline surfaces in both physical and mathematical space: the physics-based mass-spring model is mathematically constrained by the B-spline surface throughout the sculpting session. We envision that the integration of haptics with traditional computer-aided design makes it possible to realize all the potential offered by both haptic sculpting and physics-based modeling in CAD/CAM, virtual prototyping, human–computer interface, and medical training and simulation.