AdHapticA: Adaptive Haptic Application Framework

Research performed in the area of haptics has produced some remarkable results with a variety of haptic devices. However, haptic-based applications are designed to consider only a particular haptic device. Therefore, the functionality of a haptic-based system is limited by the chosen device´s features, such as workspace, device´s inertia, friction, number of points of interaction, number of degrees of freedom, and maximum force that can be exerted. In short, these haptic-based systems are limited for use with a certain haptic device. Without a doubt, the need for a software tool to adapt existing haptic-based systems to the capabilities of another haptic device is evident. On the other hand, one of the main advantages of using haptic devices is the possibility of saving data during the haptic interaction. Our proposed framework, which is called Adaptive Haptic Application (AdHapticA), deals with both issues: It automatically adapts a haptic-based system to be used with another haptic device and saves the corresponding haptic data for quantitative evaluation. The AdHapticA framework can be used to study the feasibility of certain haptic devices to meet the requirements of an application. A case study is presented to evaluate single-point interaction and hand exoskeleton haptic devices for authentication purposes by using the same virtual scenario. The applicability of the proposed framework is shown, and the results obtained from the haptic data are captured when a particular application is performed with either single-point (desktop device) or multipoint interaction devices (hand exoskeleton). Therefore, the results have shown that current hand exoskeleton devices are less suitable for tasks that require a certain level of precision, like haptic-biometric-based tasks.