cHand: Visualizing Hands in CHAI3D

Abstract

Visualization of hand movement is an important part of many haptic experiences. While some existing simulators allow for hand kinematic visualization using a generic hand model, they target robotic grasp planning rather than haptic applications. We aim to fill this gap with cHand, an extension of the haptics software library CHAI3D, which augments it with built-in hand kinematic visualization capabilities. A representation of the hand can be achieved with elementary geometric elements, or with custom geometries loaded from STL files. A live data visualization demo is included, which can be used as a template for other applications. We release cHand as an open source contribution to keep with the open source nature of CHAI3D.