A Haptic Rendering Engine of User Interfaces based on UsiXML

This paper focuses on the integration of the haptic and virtual modalities based on UsiXML language, to enhance user experience. Haptic applications have widely enriched with the auditory channel. We consider that by integrating haptic and virtual channels visual impaired users can be benefit from this approach. When the visual problem is considered users can interact with haptic devices, when the visual impairment is light the visual channel help to reinforce interaction. We propose a set of 3D-widgets haptically enhanced called hapgets. We use UsiXML, a XML-compliant User Interface Description Language and model-driven approach, to describe our models qnd support our approach. UsiXML provides a Concrete User Interface description that remains independent from any toolkit, whether graphical or virtual. To support the rendering of this description in a virtual world with haptic interaction, new models and a render engine were developed.