Wireless haptic rendering for mobile platforms

Computer haptics has so far been performed on a personal computer (PC). Off the shelf haptic devices provide only PC interfaces and software drivers for control and communication. The new wave of high capable tablet PCs and high end smart phones introduced new platforms for haptic applications. The major problem was to communicate wirelessly to provide user convenience and support mobility which is an essential feature for these platforms. In this paper we provide a wireless layered communication protocol and a hardware setup that enables off the shelf haptic devices to communicate wirelessly with a mobile device. The layers in the protocol enable the change of any hardware components without affecting the data flow. However, the adoption of the wireless interface instead of the wired one comes with the price of speed. Haptic refresh loops require a relatively high refresh rate of 1000 Hz compared to graphics loop which require between 30 and 60 only. An interpolation algorithm was demonstrated to compensate the latency and secure a stable user experience. The introduced setup was tested against portable environments and the users could perform similar functionalities to what are available on a wired setup to a PC.