K-HapticModelerTM: a haptic modeling scope and basic framework

Haptics has been studied as a means of providing users with a natural and immersive tactile sensation in real, augmented, and virtual environments in the various areas. However, in spite of the considerable advantages offered by haptic technology, it is still relatively unfamiliar to the general public. One of reasons for this unfamiliarity is the lack of abundant haptic interaction contents, especially in areas that are very close to the general public. Even though there are a few modeling tools for creating haptic contents, addition of haptic data to graphic models or scenes is limited and many haptic modeling processes have to be done mostly manually, which is time consuming and is not intuitive. For this reason, a new, intuitive, comprehensive, and efficient haptic modeling system is needed. This paper tries to define haptic modeling processes and its scopes and proposes a basic framework for a haptic modeling system (K-HapticModeler^TM) that can create and edit haptic contents easily and intuitively for any virtual objects or graphic scenes.