Haptic Rendering of Data on Irregular Grids

Haptic rendering of data on irregular grids requires additional data storage and real time computation compared to the same size data sets on regular grids. At the same time, it is important to keep computation time small to avoid noticeable artifacts in haptic rendering. When the rendering algorithm is implemented on DSP processors, memory is often much smaller than on contemporary general purpose computers. By appropriate partitioning of algorithms between preprocessing and real time computation, and by quantizing and packing data, we show how scientific visualization of data sets on the order of 1 million elements by real time haptic rendering can be accomplished.