Study on contour force rendering technology oriented to image perception

With the development of the haptic interaction technology, the force perception will play an important role in more fields, such as in entertainment, blind help, and science popularity. Force rendering is a key problem to realize the realistic force perception. The image-based 2D contour force rendering method was investigated. The user interacted with the planar images by operating the 2D force feedback mouse. With the force feedback, the user could perceive the contour shape of the image. The target image boundary was firstly extracted and the discrete pixel points were fitted to a polygonal contour curve. Then the collision detection was done according to the relationship between the positions of the virtual tool and the contour as well as the minimum distance from the virtual tool point to the contour. Based on the continuity of the contour force, the contour force rendering algorithm was proposed which ensured the system stable. An experiment was conducted to identify the animal sign by the feedback contour force. The performance, including real time response, stability and recognition rate was analyzed which verified the feasibility and the effectiveness of the presented method.