ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a voxel-based collision detection approach for 6-DOF haptic rendering. The approximate nature of the collision detection approach enables a reliable 1000 Hz haptic refresh rate in the manipulation of modestly complex rigid objects within an arbitrarily complex rigid environment. The approach effectively renders a short-range force field surrounding the environment, which repels the manipulated object(s) and strives to maintain a voxel-scale minimum separation distance that is known to preclude exact surface interpenetration. The algorithm was designed for haptically-aided virtual assembly/disassembly and maintenance analysis in aircraft engineering, and implemented as the Voxmap PointShellTM (VPS) software by Boeing. The present chapter describes the basic design presented in [McNeely et al. 99], as well as further improvements to the algorithm presented in [McNeely et al. 06].
