Granular Material Interactive Manipulation: Touching Sand with Haptic Feedback

We present a novel approach for a virtual granular material interactive manipulation with force feedback. A user can interactively change a height-field model of sand by dragging objects inside. The virtual sand behaves like real sand moving to the sides and falling back, filling holes and irregularities on the surface. The dragging object position is controlled by a haptic device that provides a position in 3D space that correspondingly changes the sand model. The sand model provides force feedback to the haptic device resulting in two principal forces; the repulse that has vertical direction and the viscous drag. The resulting force is delivered back to the haptic device. The user can sense the sand’s response as the dragging object moves through the virtual sand. This results in the haptic-visual feedback providing a higher degree of plausibility than visual feedback alone.