Haptic-enabled interactive rendering of deformable objects based on shape matching

Yuan Tian, Yin Yang, Xiaohu Guo, Balakrishnan Prabhakaran

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a novel framework to simulate 3D deformation of flexible objects in real time with haptic interaction as well as force rendering. The deformation is computed using the shape matching method, which is a meshless geometry-based approach and well known for the simplicity and robustness. We introduce new mechanism named Constraint Particle Coupling for the real time deformable interaction with haptic devices. When haptic tool collides with the soft object during the simulation, the nearest position on the object's surface to the haptic tool is identified and a new mass particle is generated so that, the user always `hits' a particle. Another particle is further added to preserve the position of the local mass centroid. The corresponding feedback force can be naturally calculated as the derivative of the local deformation energy with respect to the displacement of the collision particle. The material stiffness can also be adjusted and edited interactively by modifying the local particle mass density making the framework more flexible.