Cooperative haptic manipulation of virtual environments

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Cooperative haptic manipulation of virtual environments refers to providing several, possibly remote users with physically-accurate force sensations in both hands when they together interact with virtual objects. Such manipulations are beneficial in virtual environment-based training applications that require dexterous manipulations by multiple users, including many surgical procedures. Cooperative haptics can remove the severe dexterity and perceptual limitations of current single point haptics. In surgical training, cooperative haptics can: (i) provide experience for procedures that involve both hands, like suturing; (ii) enable expert surgeons to mentor novice surgeons with various levels of experience, on site or from a remote location; and (iii) allow several surgeons to cooperatively practice and/or plan challenging procedures on patient-specific anatomy. Current simulators with haptic feedback enable only single handed, single user, point-like manipulations of relatively simple virtual environments comprising either deformable or rigid objects. Furthermore, existing implementations typically include simulation-specific haptic rendering algorithms. Therefore, they provide force feedback for a restricted number of interactions and have limited impact as training tools. The proposed research focuses on providing physically-accurate forces to multiple, possibly remote users while they together manipulate complex virtual anatomy comprising soft and hard tissues and simulated via a variety of modeling formalisms. To this end, a local model of the interaction between the tool and bone, tissue, muscle, and ligaments will be supplied to each haptic device. These local models will be synchronized with the global simulation via control. Prediction will improve the local model accuracy in the face of delays due to complex simulations or to remote interaction. The modeling, simulation, and control approaches developed during this work will also be of use in telerobotics (telesurgery) and in other areas of virtual reality, like collaborative design/prototyping and entertainment.