I-TOUCH: a framework for computer haptics

This paper addresses the ongoing developments of a haptic (in fact multi-modal) framework called I-TOUCH, which serve two purposes. The first purpose is academic and concerns the conception of a generic framework that is able to allow researchers in haptics to prototype quickly computer haptic algorithms and to do quantitative and qualitative evaluations of their concepts. Nevertheless, the foundations of I-TOUCH are radically different from existing commercially available haptics libraries. Indeed, no haptic graph-scene is defined and haptics is directly derived from the dynamic simulation engine. We are providing a discussion on the pros and cons related to this choice. The second purpose is applicative and concerns a priori virtual prototyping with haptic feedback in industry (automotive or aerospace). Secondary we show that I-TOUCH flexibility allows creating new application with haptic feedback in a simple manner. Moreover, I-TOUCH is haptic device independent and this will be demonstrated by connecting simply various active haptic devices and passive ones. I-TOUCH is also made flexible to imply other modalities rendering devices, such as, obviously vision, but also 3D sound and tactile including thermal feedbacks. This extension is made for the purpose of psychophysics research investigations.