Collaborative work using heterogeneous haptic interface devices: Mapping workspaces to virtual space

In this paper, we discuss collaborative work using four kinds of haptic interface devices (PHANToM Omni, PHANToM Desktop, SPIDAR-G AHS, and Falcon) when the size of a virtual space is different from the size of each workspace. By experiment, we examine the influences of methods of mapping the workspace to the virtual space on the efficiency of the work. As a result, we demonstrate that the efficiency of the work is higher in the case where the workspace is uniformly mapped to the virtual space in the directions of the x-, y-, and z-axes than in the case where the workspace is individually mapped to the virtual space in the direction of each axis so that the mapped workspace size corresponds to the virtual space size.