Architectures for shared haptic virtual environments

The lack of force feedback in visual-only simulations may seriously hamper user proprioception, effectiveness and sense of immersion while manipulating virtual environments. Haptic rendering, the process of feeding back force to the user in response to interaction with the environment is sensitive to delay and can become unstable. In this paper we will describe various techniques to integrate force feedback in shared virtual simulations, dealing with significant and unpredictable delays. Three different implementations are investigated: static, collaborative and cooperative haptic virtual environments.