Integrating PhysX and OpenHaptics: Efficient force feedback generation using physics engine and haptic devices

Haptic feedback plays an important role to further enhance the level of realism of virtual environments. However, rendering of realistic haptic feedback depends on its coupling to the underlying physics engine that governs the behavior of virtual objects. This paper presents methods to streamline the generation of haptic feedback with physics engine based on Sensable´s OpenHaptics and nVidia´s PhysX. Minimal development effort is required to couple these two components. To render the forces due to the interactions between virtual objects, the error-based method and the contact plane collision response method are proposed to utilize virtual material stiffness and object collision geometry provided by PhysX. The latter method yields more jitter-free output by restricting the haptic interface on one side of the contact plane. While PhysX does not release force information from the engine, an intuitive technique is proposed to simulate a static or dynamic pulling force by introducing a spring between the haptic interface and the object being pulled. The use of these methods provides the desired force feedback without significant changes to the developer´s codebase.