Development View and Cut Generation of 3D Object Surface for Simulating Haptic Feedback with 2D Lateral Force

We have developed a haptic visualization system for molecular docking applications in education. Although molecular docking is a 3D phenomenon, desktop or laptop PCs require a mouse as a common interface, which limits manipulations to 2D. Our system applies 2D lateral forces to haptic feedback using the SPIDAR-mouse and maps the surface of a 3D object to the 2D plane. The SPIDAR-mouse is a simple haptic device with 2D lateral forces, which is considered suitable for educational environments. In this paper, we discuss the haptic visualization techniques using 2D development view and a processing method for generating cuts on the 3D object surface for a prototype of our system. Our visualization system enables users to intuitively interact with a 3D object using 2D lateral force feedback.