Weird behaviour of the green haptic input ball/cursor

[MarviB16]

Hello,

so we are in the "final" steps of our project. Sadly the Omni of the chair is broken so we couldn't test and verify that it is working properly with the prerelease version of DIMPLE. But we could test it with the Novint Falcon (https://hapticshouse.com/collections/falcons).

We are currently experiencing three bugs (though it could be that this is intended):

1. When we start DIMPLE, while the Falcon is attached, the Falcon soft crashes and doesn't work. Only after restarting DIMPLE 2-3 times the Falcon is working. I guess that could be a bug?

2. When we are using DIMPLE without any Haptic Device attached we have this "cursor ball", which can be moved with the mouse in all three dimensions. It collides properly with all walls (static) and also with the balls (dynamic) on the table (we developed a pool table game with haptic feedback). When we then do the same with the Falcon attached we are still able to collide with the walls, but no interaction with the balls is possible. This makes it "quite" hard to actually play the game. Is that intended or not? If it is intended how can we enable the collision?

3. To circumvent the problem stated in 2. we tried to "grab" a billiard cue, though when we do that all of the motors of the Falcon start to shake rapidly. This also happens when we try the same with the grab sphere or box in the test.pd. Here I am also not sure whether that is intended or not.

You can find our code here: https://github.com/MarviB16/AcousticsAndHapticsPoolTable --> test/vr.pd

[radarsat1]

Hi, sorry I could not pay attention to github earlier this month, was a bit busy.

(1) This is known, but I don't know the explanation, it takes a few tries. I think it has to do with uploading firmware, but it's something about the driver.

(2) I have found it can be difficult to find and push on small objects using a haptic device. Check that their mass is not too high! It should work though, I am able to do so using the marblebox example. Unfortunately I don't currently have a haptic device at my disposal for testing at the moment.

(3) That is a function of the spring strength used for "grabbing". It can be adjusted in the latest version using:

/world/grab/stiffness <f:stiffness>
/world/grab/damping <f:damping>

[radarsat1]

By the way the "grab" function is interesting but I think the real solution is to adjust your simulation such that it is playable -- eg. make the balls big enough and with the correct mass that they can be found and pushed around easily.