Simplified authoring of 3D haptic content for the World Wide Web

As haptic technology becomes more developed, the potential applications for three-dimensional haptic content online become more and more numerous. However, the proliferation of such content has been restricted by the fact that it requires considerable effort to create. In this paper, we present a system for allowing this content to be more easily authored and displayed. In our system, three-dimensional content created with a simple modeling language is displayed haptically by the internet browser. Thus, three-dimensional haptic scenes for the web can be written in this simple language, allowing the webpage author to circumvent the more complex scripting and/or programming which is currently necessary. Such a system should facilitate the creation of three-dimensional haptic content for the web.