Force feedback for audio systems

Participants: Stephen Sinclair, Marcelo M. Wanderley (supervisor).

Funding: NSERC Special Research Opportunity Grant

Project Type: Master's thesis (M.A. in Music Technology).

Period: 2006-2007. Status: ongoing.

This project is an attempt to find ways to integrate force-feedback haptics into audio and multi-media systems. A physical simulation of a virtual environment has been constructed which can be manipulated by a force feedback device. The simulation is initialized via OpenSoundControl from programs such as PureData, Max/MSP, or Chuck. Subsequently, each object can send back messages relating their properties or events such as collisions between objects. This data can then be used to control some form of sound synthesis.

Force-feedback in conjunction with PureData on a SensAble Phantom Omni device.

DIMPLE (Dynamic Interactive Musical PhysicaL Environment) is a GPL-licensed implementation that works on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

• S. Sinclair, M. Wanderley. 2007. Using PureData to control a haptically-enabled virtual environment. PureData convention 2007, Montreal.
• S. Sinclair, M. Wanderley. 2007. Defining a control standard for easily integrating haptic virtual environments with existing audio/visual systems. Proc. of the 2007 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME).