Grasping and moving objects in virtual environments: a preliminary approach towards a realistic behaviour

In this paper the problem of the realistic manipulation of virtual objects is considered, especially from the point of view of the modeling software and control architecture required for attacking such a complex task. Present virtual environment (VE) applications do not properly exploit the power of the modeling component in order to drive the behavior of the virtual entities. This problem is extremely important for grasping and pushing procedures of virtual objects. In the following treatment we have addressed the control of manipulation in VE by focusing on a first model that exploits interpenetration between the virtual hand and the virtual object. The analysis of the computer architecture for the modeling computation and graphical representation of the VE is presented