Development of Virtual Sculpting System With Haptics in PowerWall 3-D Virtual Environment

This paper presents the research work on developing a virtual sculpting system with haptic interface integrated with PowerWall system for complex product design. The PowerWall is a large scale (10 ft by 7.5 ft) immersive Virtual Environment (VE). The approach is to apply virtual sculpting method by interactively carving a workpiece using a virtual tool. With the implementation of stereoscopic visual feedback and haptic force feedback in the PowerWall, the designer would appreciate a much better understanding of the 3D shape geometry and can explore through the 3D scene like he/she can do in the real world. The “hybrid interaction technique” is presented as solution to solve the mismatch between the small workspace of the haptic device and the large size of PowerWall system.© 2012 ASME