A peer-to-peer architecture for collaborative haptic assembly

Virtual Environments using haptic devices have proved useful for assembly/disassembly simulation of mechanical components. To date most haptic virtual environments are stand-alone. Collaborative Haptic Virtual Environments (CHVEs) are distributed across a number of users via a network, such as the Internet. These present new challenges to the designer, such as consistency of the virtual environments, user-user haptic interaction, and scalability. The system described in this paper considers the CHVEs to be distributed over a packet-switched network such as the Internet. It gives priority to the validation of interactions between objects grasped by users; guarantees consistency across different users' virtual environments. The paper explains the components used and the consistency-maintenance scheme that guarantees the consistency of the virtual scene in the remote nodes. Consistency and force feedback results are also discussed. Results presented show the system maintains a consistent and satisfactory response when network incurs delay or packet jitter.