Development and Experimental Verification of A Force Feedback Manipulator for VR Systems

• Main Authors: Mu-Cheng Hsieh, 謝木政
• Other Authors: Kuu-Young Young
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/44648930688909559032

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 電機與控制工程系 === 89 === Along with the development of computers and human-machine interface devices in recent years, VR has been popularly used in many areas, e.g., entertainment, education, training, industry, arts, and so on. VR can yield the operator an illusion of reality and a feeling of “being there” via real-time interaction with the operator through many different sensorial channels, such as vision, audition, and haptics. Specifically, force feedback devices can provide much reality and real-time interaction. In this thesis, we develop a 2-DOF force-feedback manipulator that lets the operator input commands and sense force information. The force-feedback manipulator consists of torque-controlled motors, drivers, controller cards, manipulator mechanism, and a controller unit. The controller unit is a PC, which emulates VR scenes, and generates graphics and force in different fresh rates using the multi-threading technique. We design a series of experiments, to investigate the relationship between the force update frequency and the haptic quality, and to extract suitable information from the VR scenes and express them in the form of force. From the results of our experiments, the minimum force update frequency for the acceptable haptic quality depends on the operating mode. And higher force update frequency provides higher haptic quality at the expense of computation load. Suitable force representation derived from the information from VR scenes makes the operator well deal with system dynamics in real-time, and consequently enhance performance.