SPEM:: A new haptic rendering method based on time coherence

Nowadays many interactive computer graphics applications use the haptic channel to achieve higher degrees of immersion. Most of these systems have to deal with soft bodies and they always demand higher and higher levels of realism, increasing the complexity of the animated scenarios. Therefore, the techniques used to animate the objects should be very efficient to grant interactivity. Furthermore, one of the most important issues in physically based simulations is to keep the model stable under all simulation conditions. This paper presents a technique called Separated Proxy-Effector Method (SPEM) to keep high levels of stability in the haptic response without degrading the performance of the simulation system. SPEM is fast, haptic plausible, robust, and it deals with soft bodies. Experimental results show the advantages of this new approach from the point of view of stability, in particular if it is compared with distance-based minimization techniques. Its simplicity grants efficient implementations for a wide range of applications. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.