Collision Detection and Teamcenter Haptics: CATCH

Members:
Anthony Alleven
Logan Scott
Matt Mayer
James Erickson
Paul Uhing

The field of virtual reality has advanced greatly in the past few years. One factor continuing to slow the advancement of virtual reality is its lack of reality. Haptic technology is adding this missing reality to the virtual world by introducing tactile feedback to virtual interactions. This allows the user to experience virtual object through the use of force feedback, vibration, or motion. While researchers like Dr. Vance have had success making use of these devices, many companies that would like to use this technology do not try to use haptic technology in their design process for two reasons. The first is that the devices themselves are very expensive. The second issue is a lack of commercial software support for the integration of haptic technology with existing CAD software.

CATCH is a prototype standalone software library designed to demonstrate integration of haptic technology and Siemens Teamcenter Visualization Mockup (TcVis), a 3D CAD model-viewing software. This program’s primary purpose is to facilitate communication, transform data, and control the interactions between different components including IPSI, a physics engine; JT Open Toolkit, a library for interacting with 3D CAD files; and TcVis. All of these components are currently available for commercial use. By combining these applications, we hope to demonstrate the capabilities of commercial-compatible software integration with haptic technology.

Photo of James Erickson interacting with our application in METaL