SDK improves Linux ‘sense of touch’
Aug 13, 2002 — by LinuxDevices Staff — from the LinuxDevices Archive — viewsWoburn, MS — (press release excerpt) — SensAble Technologies, Inc. today announced immediate availability of GHOST (General Haptics Open Software Toolkit) Version 4 which for the first time provides support for the Red Hat Linux and other platforms.
The GHOST SDK (software development toolkit) drastically reduces the time and effort required for developers to touch-enable their applications. The core 'physics engine' takes care of complex computations leaving developers to concentrate on physical properties like locations, mass, friction and hardness. GHOST SDK is geared towards anyone interested in adding a sense of touch to the human/computer interface in industries such as medical simulation and training, geophysical, telerobotics, assembly path planning, molecular modeling and nano-manipulation.
A major new feature of GHOST Version 4 is the addition of the gstDeviceIO class. This class provides a new degree of programming flexibility with low-level access to the PHANTOM device. This enhancement enables users to obtain raw encoder counts, send forces directly to the PHANTOM device and receive motor temperatures. gstDeviceIO also allows users to perform their own servo loop scheduling utilizing update rates other than the standard 1kHz update rates.
Novint Technologies developed the Red Hat Linux port of GHOST Version 4 under license to SensAble Technologies and is the exclusive North American distributor for the Linux version.
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