Haptic Visualization of Material on TIN-Based Surfaces

Abstract

Haptic devices are nowadays often used in non-hitech applications due to their increasing availability. These special input/output devices provide native 3D manipulation and, additionally, unlike mouse or keyboard, a control with a force. We present a low-level haptic visualization method which is able to simulate material on a surface and which works natively with the triangulated irregular network terrain models (TIN). Our method allows to model and visualize several materials, such as sand, concrete, wood, etc. New materials could be created by setting five parameters and, optionally, by the creation of a material relief. In our framework we use the TIN terrain model together with real-time erosion and interactive haptic editing using a set of virtual tools. We have performed a user study which is also included in the paper. Unlike existing methods, we use a general shape of the tool; our solution is capable of geometric editing of the TIN model, and it allows a simulation of several materials.