Abstract
Haptic feedback plays an important role in interaction between users and virtual objects, and in communication between users in shared virtual environments. Recently, many kinds of haptic displays have been developed, however, software is not compatible with those many haptic displays. So, we have developed basic haptic library (HIP : Haptic Interface Platform) for many kinds of haptic displays. HIP enables users to make complex virtual environments easily. Since HIP is compatible with many haptic displays, we will also be able to recycle software and to work cooperatively in making applications. In this paper, we describe the structure of HIP and methods of constructing shared virtual environments with different types of haptic displays using HIP. In the last part of this paper, we experimented on the tasks about manipulating of virtual objects with haptic displays. Also we verified the effectiveness of cooperative work with haptic displays.
