The videos are also available on our Youtube channel:
Humans interact with hand-actuated products on a daily basis. Examples are car doors, manual presses, furniture doors, machine housings, fitness equipment, or reconfigurable types of furniture. The RePlaLink can be used for the simulation and haptic representation of such mechanisms based on virtual prototypes. This makes it possible to improve the development process of such systems and reduce the use of physical prototypes.
The RePlaLink consists of a servo-driven kinematic structure with a handle as haptic interface. Due to its structure, it is particularly well suited to simulate planar mechanisms. The system measures, among others, the user forces, takes them into account in a real-time simulation of the virtual mechanism and displays its reaction. This allows users to directly feel the mechanism’s haptic properties while operating the system. Users can change them interactively by modifying the mechanism’s parameters and get direct haptic feedback. This enables fast, inexpensive, and frequent validation and evaluation of haptic properties, even at early development stages. The videos introduce the structure of the RePlaLink and show the haptic simulation and synthesis of an exemplary hand-actuated mechanism.
You can find more information about the project here.
Contact person:
Jan-Lukas Archut
Mahshid Pour Ebrahimabadi
