Immersion Corporation

Cybernet Systems Corporation

Cybernet Haptic Systems Corporation

Todd Yocum

Thomas M Peurach

Douglas Haanpaa

Charles J Jacobus

Methods are presented for authoring geometrical databases which incorporate touch or haptic feedback. In particular, a database of geometrical elements incorporates attributes necessary to support haptic interactions such as stiffness, hardness, friction, and so forth. Users may instantiate objects designed through CAD/CAM environments or attach haptic or touch attributes to subcomponents such as surfaces or solid sub-objects. The resulting haptic/visual databases or world-describing models can then be viewed and touched using a haptic browser or other appropriate user interface.

Haptic authoring

In a force-reflection system wherein a basic force pattern including a plurality of behavioral attributes is applied to a user-moveable member, apparatus and methods are disclosed for altering one or more of the behavioral attributes without changing the basic force pattern. The invention may be used to adjust attributes such as amplitude maximum and average, play-out rate, and play-out lead/lag in conjunction with any type of user-manipulable member, including a joystick, wheel, yoke, or non-contact arrangement. The invention may be implemented at a high or low level, and arrays of haptic controls or equivalent graphical user interface (GUI) elements may be used to define haptic force temporal sequences for replay.

Haptic device attribute control

A method of browsing geometrical databases through touch or haptic feedback is disclosed which presents a tactile virtual reality to a user, facilitating the simultaneous browsing, or viewing, touching, attaching to, or manipulation of object descriptions contained within files both visually and haptically. The files may be local to a computer system or located across a network on one or more computer systems. In a preferred embodiment, the invention preferably renders haptic features using a layered architecture to support multiple axes per device, multiple devices per servo layer, multiple servo layers per communications layer, and multiple applications accessing common or different force-feedback devices.

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Ann Arbor, MI, United States of America

Todd Yocum