Distributed Construction of Configuration Spaces for Real-Time Haptic Deformation Modeling

Haptic rendering is an important area of research that enables the user to employ haptic perception in human–computer interaction. An important motivation here is to use the human touch to study the behavior of various models. However, the high refresh rate needed for a stable haptic interaction on the one hand and the high-computational-cost characteristic for the simulation of numerous phenomena on the other hand represent a big issue. In this paper, an approach based on the distributed construction of configuration spaces is presented. The main idea behind this approach is to profit from employing a high-performance environment (e.g., computational grid) to overcome or at least moderate the high-frequency issue. The approach is presented using nonlinear deformation models, which are essential for realistic modeling of soft tissues. A distributed algorithm is presented, and its properties are evaluated quantitatively.