Rendering of Constraints With Underactuated Haptic Devices

Several previous works have studied the application of proxy-based rendering algorithms to underactuated haptic devices. However, all these works make oversimplifying assumptions about the configuration of the haptic device, and they ignore the user's intent. In this article, we lift those assumptions, and we carry out a theoretical study that unveils the existence of unnatural ghost forces under typical proxy-based rendering. We characterize and quantify those ghost forces. In addition, we design a novel rendering strategy, with anisotropic coupling between the device and the proxy. With this strategy, the forces rendered by an underactuated device are a best match of the forces rendered by a fully actuated device. We have demonstrated our findings on synthetic experiments and a simple real-world experiment.