Algorithms and Data Structures for Haptic Rendering: Curve Constraints, Distance Maps, and Data Logging

In this paper, we describe three novel data processing techniques used for haptic rendering and simulation:

• We present an approach to constraining a haptic device to travel along a discretely-sampled curve.
• We present an approach to generating distance maps from surface meshes using axis-aligned bounding box (AABB) trees. Our method exploits spatial coherence among neighboring points.
• We present a data structure that allows thread-safe, lock-free streaming of data from a high-priority haptic rendering thread to a lower-priority data-logging thread.

We provide performance metrics and example applications for each of these techniques. C++-style pseudocode is provided wherever possible and is used as the basis for presenting our approaches. Links to actual implementations are also provided for each section.