Virtual Enviornments
Virtual environments provide the sensory experience of being in a computer generated, simulated space. They have potential uses in applications ranging from education and training to design and prototyping. The utility of current generation virtual environments is limited by a lack of veridical perception of simulated spaces and an associated lack of realism in interacting with the simulated spaces. Much of our work is based on the thesis that combining motor and visual information in an effective way helps optimize performance when people interact with virtual environments. Current projects: 
Locomotion
interfaces. Treadmills are an example of a locomotion
device allowing a user to walk in a relatively normal manner
without
significant change in actual location. Our research deals with
combining
more sophisticated locomotion devices with visual displays in order to
construct true locomotion interfaces which will allow a user to
interact with a virtual world by walking through that world. Spatial orientation in
virtual environments. People
naturally interact with the the complex real world while maintaining
spatial orientation in an effective manner. Simulated interaction
with current generation virtual worlds is far less easy. Partly, this
is
because people systematically misperceive spatial information when
using
visually immersive interfaces such as head-mounted displays. Our work
aims at understanding why this is so and improving the effectiveness of
immersive displays in accurately conveying the geometry of the
simulated world. Virtual prototyping.
The goal of this project is to add a sense of contact and
manipulation in the CAD design of mechanical assemblies. Part
interaction, assembly, and manipulability can then be evaluated without
fabrication of physical prototypes. A haptic device, the Sarcos
Dextrous
Arm Master, is being employed as a real-time interface to the Geometric
Design and Computation (GDC) research group's Alpha_1 CAD/CAM system. Scientific
visualization. Three-dimensional displays are one of
the next steps and provide a much more realistic rendering of physical
space. The goal of this research is a complete immersion of the
user into the data to provide more intuitive and efficient interaction
than is possible with conventional visualization techniques. Faculty Elaine Cohen Sarah Creem-Regehr Chuck Hansen John Hollerbach Chris Johnson Peter Shirley William B. Thompson |