Elastic object modeling in a VR-based telerobotic system

For successful teleoperation, it is crucial whether the telepresence can be realized in a sufficiently natural way, so that the operator may feel physically present at the remote site. This telepresence generation becomes more challenging, when the telerobotic system is employed to manipulate soft objects. In this paper, we propose a scheme on virtual object modeling for achieving realistic emulation of the object´s behavior in the virtual environment. According to its physical property, the proposed modeling scheme generates the shape change of the object and also the corresponding reactive force during the deformation. Experiments based on using a VR-based telerobotic system developed in our laboratory to interact with elastic objects demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.