Multi-Contact Stiffness and Friction Augmentation Using Contact Centroid-Based Normal-Tangential Force Decomposing

Abstract

This paper presents an effective approach to extract and selectively augment normal and tangential force components when interacting with a real object. The approach first approximates the behavior of a contact area with a single representative point, i.e., contact centroid, which is then used to decompose the reaction force into a force due to pressure and that due to friction. For augmentation, the two components are selectively amplified or diminished via a haptic interface. The proposed approach is scalable and can be easily extended to multi-points interaction, which is also demonstrated in this work. The decomposition performance was evaluated by comparing the decomposition results of the algorithm with a FEM simulation, demonstrating the feasibility of our approach for a palpation scenario.