Influence of mechanical impedance of human arm on the stability of haptic rendering

Research shows that haptic rendering leads to a more realistic virtual reality system. Being an important part of the system, human operator directly affects the stability of haptic rendering. In this paper, the influence of human, i.e., the mechanical impedance of his arm, on the stability of haptic rendering is studied through experiment with virtual wall haptic system based on FALCON device. Several subjects participate in the experiment and are instructed to a series of interactions with the virtual wall. During the interactions, different interference force fields are set to change the movement of the arm and the mechanical impedance of human arm is tuned by background force fields. Experiment results indicate that the influence brought by interference force are weakened by background force, which means the mechanical impedance of human arm h can be tuned and has the potential to improve the stability of haptic rendering systems.