Generating Force Vectors from Projective Truncated Signed Distance Fields for Collision Avoidance and Haptic Feedback

Signed Distance Fields are a common surface representation method widely used for both 3D mapping and obstacle avoidance. While the former traditionally uses projec- tive Truncated Signed Distance Fields (TSDF), the latter often requires a complete Euclidean Signed Distance Field (ESDF) representation of the environment. In this paper, we propose a unied system by combining both methods to generate force vectors to nearby obstacles from a TSDF-based 3D reconstruction. We introduce a new merging scheme to better capture the geometry of the object, with no post-processing requirements, and a way to increase the effective range of the system. Validation experiments demonstrate the accuracy of the force vector calculation by comparing it against an ideal simulated environment. The exibility of the system is demonstrated by implementing a haptic feedback teleoperation setup, which is validated through a user study in a teleoperation task. Through this, it is shown that the proposed method provides a statistically signicant improvement to the task. Finally, a brief description on future improvements to the system is presented.