Grope (1967)
© Fred Brooks, University of North Carolina
The Force-Feedback Project, which began in 1967, first focused on the development of a system to support scientific visualization in the area of molecular docking, the Docker application. This application provides graphic (wire-frame) representations of molecules and their inter-atomic forces to allow a user to adjust the relative position and orientation of molecules while searching for minimum energy binding sites.
A series of systems have been developed, evolving from a 2-D system, through a 3-D system and a 6-D system for a simple docking task, to a full 6-D molecular docking system called GROPE-III. These later systems have employed a modified Model E-3 Argonne Remote Manipulator (ARM).