In this paper we introduce a "spatialized haptic rendering" technique to enhance 6DOF haptic manipulation of virtual objects with impact position information using vibrations. This rendering technique uses our perceptive ability to determine the contact position by using the vibrations generated by the impact. In particular, the different vibrations generated by a beam are used to convey the impact position information. We present two experiments conducted to tune and evaluate our spatialized haptic rendering technique. The first experiment investigates the vibration parameters (amplitudes/frequencies) needed to enable an efficient discrimination of the force patterns used for spatialized haptic rendering. The second experiment is an evaluation of spatialized haptic rendering during 6DOF manipulation. Taken together, the results suggest that spatialized haptic rendering can be used to improve the haptic perception of impact position in complex 6DOF interactions.

In this paper, we propose to evaluate the benefits of event-based haptic rendering in virtual environments subject to high damping or low contact stiffness. In such context, the degraded perception of contact impairs the manipulation performance and the overall user's experience. Haptic rendering techniques known as event-based (or open-loop) rendering have been proposed to improve the realism of contacts in such contexts.

This paper decribes a general event-based approach to improve multimodal rendering of 6DOF (degree of freedom) contact between objects in interactive virtual object simulations. The contact events represent the different steps of two objects colliding with each other: (1) the state of free motion, (2) the impact event at the moment of collision (3) the friction state during the contact and (4) the detachment event at the end of the contact. The different events are used to improve the classical feedback by superimposing specific rendering techniques based on these events. First we propose a general method to generate these events based only on the objects' positions given by the simulation. Second, we describe a set of different types of multimodal feedback associated to the different events that we implemented in a complex virtual simulation dedicated to virtual assembly. For instance, we propose a visual rendering of impact, friction and detachment based on particle effects. We used the impact event to improve the 6DOF haptic rendering by superimposing a high frequency force pattern to the classical force feedback. We also implemented a realistic audio rendering using impact and friction sound on the corresponding events. All these first implementations can be easily extended with other event-based effects on various rigid body simulations thanks to our modular approach.

This paper describes a set of visual cues of contact designed to improve the interactive manipulation of virtual objects in industrial assembly/maintenance simulations. These visual cues display information of proximity, contact and effort between virtual objects when the user manipulates a part inside a digital mock-up. The set of visual cues encloses the apparition of glyphs (arrow, disk, or sphere) when the manipulated object is close or in contact with another part of the virtual environment. Light sources can also be added at the level of contact points. A filtering technique is proposed to decrease the number of glyphs displayed at the same time. Various effects--such as change in color, change in size, and deformation of shape- can be applied to the glyphs as a function of proximity with other objects or amplitude of the contact forces. A preliminary evaluation was conducted to gather the subjective preference of a group of participants during the simulation of an automotive assembly operation. The collected questionnaires showed that participants globally appreciated our visual cues of contact. The changes in color appeared to be preferred concerning the display of distances and proximity information. Size changes and deformation effects appeared to be preferred in terms of perception of contact forces between the parts. Last, light sources were selected to focus the attention of the user on the contact areas.