A heterogeneous scalable architecture for collaborative haptics environments

The purpose of this research effort is to design a generic architecture for collaborative haptic, audio, visual environments (C-HAVE). We aim to develop a heterogeneous scalable architecture for large collaborative haptics environments where a number of potential users participate with different kinds of haptic devices. This paper begins with a brief overview of C-HAVE and then proceeds to describe a generic architecture that is implemented over HLA/RTI (High Level Architecture/Run Time Infrastructure), an IEEE standard for distributed simulations and modeling. A potential electronic commerce application over C-HAVE is discussed.