Haptic rendering involving an elastic tube for assembly simulations

While there is considerable research on automatic assembly and virtual assembly of rigid parts, much less research is focused on assembly tasks involving deformable parts such as tubes, wires or deformable tools, etc. In this paper, we present a novel approach for simulating the behavior of the elastic tube via haptics during virtual assembly and modeling contact forces with high-fidelity and high rendering update rate by using the physical beam-bending model. The contact force is modeled based on different types of contact states with the effects of deformation and friction taken into account. Compliant motion is also simulated accordingly. We further test the virtual assembly method by implementing a specific assembly task and shows how such a virtual assembly environment can be used to conduct feasibility analysis of assembly motion plans to facilitate real-world automatic assembly