Simplified authoring of 3D haptic content for the World Wide Web

As haptic technology becomes more developed, the potential applications for three-dimensional haptic content online become more and more numerous. However, the proliferation of such content has been restricted by the fact that it requires considerable effort to create. We present a system for allowing this content to be more easily authored and displayed. In our system, three-dimensional content created with a simple modeling language is displayed haptically by the Internet browser. Thus, three-dimensional haptic scenes for the Web can be written in this simple language, allowing the Web page author to circumvent the more complex scripting and/or programming which is currently necessary. Such a system should facilitate the creation of three-dimensional haptic content for the Web.