Model Based Compensation for Low Mass Objects Haptic Manipulation in Virtual Environments

This paper aims at presenting a model based compensation command law developed in order to enhance the transparency of haptic interfaces for low mass objects manipulations in virtual environments. After presenting the context and related work of the study, the model based compensation command law is developed and implemented on a 6-dofs haptic interface. Uncertainties of the model (friction coefficients) are then tuned thanks to an experimental protocol enabling a subjective comparison between real and virtual manipulations of a low mass object. Results of this experimentation are presented and discussed. The compensation of friction on the first and second axes of the haptic interface showed significant improvement of both realism and perceived load. A short conclusion opens perspectives to this work at the end of the paper. Such a work has the potential to enhance the fidelity of interaction for ergonomics applicaitions.