Haptic Rendering of Topological Constraints to Users Manipulating Serial Virtual Linkages

This paper presents an approach for haptic rendering of topological constraints to users operating serial virtual linkages. In the proposed approach, a haptic device controller is designed to penalize users’ departure from the configuration manifold of the virtual linkage. This manifold is locally approximated through the range space of the Jacobian of the virtual linkage computed at the user’s hand. Simulations and controlled experiments performed using a planar haptic interaction system demonstrate that the proposed approach successfully constrains the users’ motion as required by the topology of the virtual linkage that they manipulate.