A two-channel haptic enabled VR dental training system

The goal of this paper is to develop a two-channel haptic interaction system, which enables the dentist to practice his dental skills in the virtual reality dental training system with both his hands. A training model with the cooperation of both hands provides a VR training environment which is more similar with the real one. Using two haptic devices: Phantom and Omega, a universal dental surgery model is established: probing a tooth using a probe with one hand and cutting it with the other. The system architecture is introduced and the key technology is discussed. Multi-thread method is utilized to synchronize different interaction tasks. Algorithms of Collision detection, force model and reconstruction under synchronous haptic tasks are discussed. In the end, experiments illustrate factors of fidelity. Further more, other kinds of dental surgeries could be developed basing on this work.