Haptic Interfacing for Virtual Prototyping of Mechanical CAD Designs

A network-based real-time control architecture has been developed which integrates a haptic interface (the Sarcos Dextrous Arm Master) with an advanced CAD modeling system (Utah’s Alpha_1). New algorithms have been developed and tested for surface proximity testing, fast updates to local closest point on a surface, and smooth transitions between surfaces. The combination of these new algorithms with the haptic interface and CAD modeling system permits a user to actively touch and manipulate virtual parts as well as passively view them on a CRT screen.