Reduced Interface Models for Haptic Interfacing With Virtual Environments

Haptic interfacing typically requires high communication frequencies in order to render realistic interactions between a user and a virtual environment. In this work, we introduce reduced interface modelling (RIM) as a method to bridge the discrepancy in frequency requirements between haptic devices and virtual environment simulators. The method offers a model-based approach to approximate the environment behaviour between integration time steps, without relying on time history extrapolations of the environment state with no physical basis. Using a vehicle dynamics simulation interfacing with a haptic steering wheel, we show that the proposed method results in a drastic reduction in the computation time required for numerical integration and updates to the virtual environment compared to the common zero-order-hold method. T-tests on numerical ratings by participants in a multi-user study also confirm that the RIM yields better uncoupled stability and haptic rendering smoothness compared to a common time-history-based multi-rate sampling method.