HapticGiant: A Novel Very Large Kinesthetic Haptic Interface with Hierarchical Force Control

TL;DR

HapticGiant introduces a large-scale kinesthetic haptic interface with hierarchical force control, closely mimicking human arm kinematics to enhance immersion and natural locomotion in virtual reality environments.

Contribution

The paper presents HapticGiant, a novel large-scale kinesthetic haptic device with a hierarchical control scheme that manages system constraints and singularities for improved realism.

Findings

Effective rendering of arbitrary kinematic chains

Native handling of joint and Cartesian constraints

Enhanced immersion in virtual reality applications

Abstract

Research in virtual reality and haptic technologies has consistently aimed to enhance immersion. While advanced head-mounted displays are now commercially available, kinesthetic haptic interfaces still face challenges such as limited workspaces, insufficient degrees of freedom, and kinematics not matching the human arm. In this paper, we present HapticGiant, a novel large-scale kinesthetic haptic interface designed to match the properties of the human arm as closely as possible and to facilitate natural user locomotion while providing full haptic feedback. The interface incorporates a novel admittance-type force control scheme, leveraging hierarchical optimization to render both arbitrary serial kinematic chains and Cartesian admittances. Notably, the proposed control scheme natively accounts for system limitations, including joint and Cartesian constraints, as well as singularities. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of HapticGiant and its control scheme, paving the way for highly immersive virtual reality applications.