Improved haptic rendering through tuning the mechanical impedance of human arm

Haptic rendering provides users with the senses of touch during their interacting with the simulated objects in virtual environment. The maximum achievable object stiffness is critical for realistic haptic rendering of rigid objects, and is constrained by several inevitable "non-idealities" in the haptic system as well as the behavior of the human operator, i.e. the mechanical impedance of human arm. By superimposing a position-based force field over traditional haptic feedback, a new impedance tuning (IT) simulation strategy is proposed, which aims to improve haptic system's stability and performance. Based on Delta Haptic Device, comparison experiment is carried out with six individual subjects, and proves the validity of our proposed method.