Haptic Exploration of Remote Environments with Gesture-based Collaborative Guidance

We present a collaborative haptic interaction method for exploring a remote physical environment with guidance from a distant helper. Spatial information, which is represented by a point cloud, of the remote environment is directly rendered as a contact force without reconstruction of surfaces. On top of this, the helper can selectively exert an attractive force for reaching a target or a repulsive force for avoiding a forbidden region to the user by using free-hand gestures.