This project advances knowledge about how to give computer users convincingly real haptic (sense of touch) interaction with computers. While there has been some progress in this area, chiefly through the use of back-driven robotic-like manipulators, this is a substantially new approach which promises a qualitative leap in improvement of such capabilities: A user interacts with the computer by grasping a rigid tool whose behavioral description is computed, employing this tool to interact with computed environments which are semantically meaningful in terms of the application. At the same time, the environment exerts realistic forces and torques on the tool’s handle which are felt by the user. The vision is one of providing the computer user immediate, high-fidelity, convincingly real interaction with computed environments.