Recently more entertainment robots have been developed and became a part of our daily life. These robots remain in contact with us for a long time, and so the impression of friendliness is important for such kind of robots.

This demonstration focuses on two haptic experiences: sensing the composition and stiffness of an object, and estimating dynamics for multiple objects. Slight vibrations express the differences between materials and degrees of stiffness. Haptic rendering reproduces them with standard-frequency haptic devices by adding vibration. For interaction with multiple objects, parameters of motion such as inertia, viscosity, and impulse describe the dynamics of the objects.

We propose a realtime method to generate a virtual trajectory tracking any real trajectory for any articulated bodies with dynamics simulator based on iterative LCP solvers. Proposed method computes joint torques to track desired (real) trajectory using physics engines (1st step), then executes one step of simulation to update posture and velcity of the articulated body with PD control targeting to the desired trajectory (2nd step).