A Framework for Benchmarking Haptic Systems

As more and more haptic rendering algorithms are developed, the need for evaluation and comparison is becoming more pressing. However, evaluating and comparing haptic rendering algorithms presents two challenges. First, haptic systems provide bidirectional communication between humans and the computer. Therefore, the outputs of such systems are highly reliant on human inputs, which are hard to reproduce consistently. Second, haptic systems are real-time systems. Testing real-time systems itself is difficult because of their timing constraints. Our solution to these challenges is to build a simulation-based tool where hunian inputs and the real haptic device are replaced by input simulation models, and a haptic device simulator, respectively. The main purpose of this tool is to provide repeatable inputs for haptic systems' testing and enable qualitative evaluation among them. The tool also provides replicable test cases for haptic system debugging and regression tests.