Optimal design of stable haptic interfaces

Haptic interfaces are used to permit interaction between virtual and real environments. They permit for example a human to interact with the environment by simulating the sense of touch by generating force feedback. All existing haptic interfaces, however, generate instabilities because of inadequate attention to intersample behavior. In this paper, we present a new approach to reduce instability in haptic interfaces caused by intersample behavior. The approach calls for an optimization based approach that seeks to minimize the cumulative mean square error between the desired analog force feedback and the discrete input actually generated, at selected intersample instants.