[ODE] Adding a good "feel" to a haptics device

[Tatu Lahtela]

Hi!

I have a 6 degree of freedom haptics device and I'm trying to add a good
"feel" to the objects. The goal is that I could
- Feel the surface of the objects with the device
- Push them around in the scene
- Grab and carry the objects with the device.

What I've come up so far is to create only geoms for the haptic device
and update the geoms' position according to its movement. The positions
updates ok and I can push other objects with these geoms.
	 But the problem is the force interaction. The solution I came up with
was to send a force relative to the penetration depth and the normal
vector, but this approach works ok only when interacting with the floor.
It's too easy to get "too deep" in to the object and it either gives too
big a force to the device or shoots the object far away. Especially
touching objects directly from above is troublesome if the object is
lying on the ground.

Any good suggestions how to do better force interaction between the two
systems?


-- 
Tatu Lahtela <lahtela at cs.tut.fi>