From: impellus@ames.ucsd.edu (Tom Impelluso) Subject: Re: PROD: Force feedback devices Date: 13 Mar 1996 14:48:04 GMT Organization: UC San Diego, AMES Department From: impellus@ames.ucsd.edu (Tom Impelluso) In article <3142A1D6.71EF@heim5.tu-clausthal.de>, Oliver Mertschat writes: |> I don't know if it is the right place to post me message, but maybe |> there is anybody out there who knows something about force feedback |> devices. I'm looking for vendors, because we need one of these in our |> research projects at the Technical University Clausthal, Germany. If |> anybody knows some interesting adresses where we can get such things |> even high-tech or low-cost please contact me via e-mail. Hi Oliver, First, what I did to enable me to answer your question... This is a short synopsis of my recent demo at SuperComputer '95 I used force-feedback devices in VR. Two force-feedback devices were brought onto the Immersadesk (which is similar to a CAVE but with a screen presentation; the Immersadesk is equipped with a wand and tracker and presents the data in three-D stereo) and two people were able to pull on the virtual object, interactively alter the stress and deformation, and, finally, be able to feel each other's pull. The force feedback calculation was determined by a parallelized finite element process running on the Cray T3D. Berkeley sockets, exploiting ATM/IP, exchanged data between the I-DESK and the Cray. An interrupt driven serial communication code exchanged data between the joystick and the I-DESK. I wrote all the software myself: Finite element; Message Passing on Cray T3D; socket-based API for ATM; visualization using OpenGL; PC-based interrupt driven serial communication. I have seen a few force-feedback devices. I think the best are made by Immersion Corp. They are high tech and cheap. I give you the e-mail of several people there: Louis Rosenberg, president, founder louis@cdr.stanford.edu Mike Levin, Director of Medical Products levin@immerse.com and of course WWW: http://www.immerse.com Tom Impelluso