A case study of phantom omni force feedback device for virtual product design

Research towards a methodology which helps designers/engineers in conceptualizing, facilitating participatory Design and validating products during designing and development process becoming more important with the aim of reducing the lengthy process and errors that crops up during the process. In this kind of situation it is felt that Virtual Reality-Haptic is among the solutions to cater repeated physical prototyping as well as for rapid prototyping and reduces related cost. This integrated system of virtual reality-Haptic feedback interaction may enhance the usability evaluation of virtual products. Therefore, emphasis of this paper is to study the virtual and augmented reality, Haptics working principles and their advantage towards product evaluation. Through this study it was possible to understand the working principles of Haptic device and write codes/program using OpenHaptics Software development Toolkit in order to manipulate the virtual object which was prepared through CAD Software (in this research CATIA was used), thereafter, experimental setup with full system were established. After preparing questionnaires and virtual reality-haptic system, participants were allowed to manipulate the virtual object via phantom Omni haptic feedback device and compare the physical properties of different virtual objects. Finally collected data were analyzed and drawn a result that revealed the potential of Virtual Reality-Haptic system for realizing the virtual objects surface texture, size, shape, and weight.