An Image-Based Virtual Reality Prototype System

The most important goal of virtual reality is to create a virtual world computers where users are allowed to view the environment and control the virtual objects interactively.Traditionally,virtual reality systems use 3D computer graphics to model and render a virtual environment in real time.However,this approach usually requires laborious modeling and expensive special-purpose rendering hardware.Image-based rendering is a new approach in composing a virtual environment in which a set of panoramic images is used to compose the virtual environment and walking in the space is accomplished by “hopping”to different panoramic points.This paper introduces an experimental image-based VR system.The techniques utilized in the system,in particular the authoring and interactive control tools of the system,are described in detail.     

Lighting virtual objects in a single image via coarse scene understanding

Achieving convincing visual consistency between virtual objects and a real scene mainly relies on the lighting effects of virtual-real composition scenes. The problem becomes more challenging in lighting virtual objects in a single real image. Recently,scene understanding from a single image has made great progress. The estimated geometry,semantic labels and intrinsic components provide mostly coarse information,and are not accurate enough to re-render the whole scene. However,carefully integrating the estimated coarse information can lead to an estimate of the illumination parameters of the real scene. We present a novel method that uses the coarse information estimated by current scene understanding technology to estimate the parameters of a ray-based illumination model to light virtual objects in a real scene. Our key idea is to estimate the illumination via a sparse set of small 3D surfaces using normal and semantic constraints. The coarse shading image obtained by intrinsic image decomposition is considered as the irradiance of the selected small surfaces. The virtual objects are illuminated by the estimated illumination parameters. Experimental results show that our method can convincingly light virtual objects in a single real image,without any pre-recorded 3D geometry,reflectance,illumination acquisition equipment or imaging information of the image.     

Estimation of Human Movements via Quaternion

This paper presents the authors＇ research results about HRI （human-robot interaction）. The goal is to estimate together the arm position, the anatomical movements of the shoulder and accelerations of the arm with respect to the shoulder and visualizing this movement in a 3-D virtual model to control a Robot. The estimation algorithm makes use of a nonlinear observer and an optimization routine to fuse information from the sensor. The global asymptotic convergence of the nonlinear observer is guaranteed. Extensive tests of the presented methodology with real world data show the effectiveness of the proposed procedure.     

A lightweight Web service enabled framework for ubiquitous RFID applications

RFID can give a unique digital identifier to real physical object, and bridge the physical world with the virtual digital world. Based on the analysis on our experience of RFID applications, some common key issues and requirements of RFID application are presented. A lightweight framework based on Web Service to support ubiquitous RFID application is designed and implemented. This lightweight framework provides the integration of RFID technology and other holistic applications. Virtual object is used to map the real physical world object and the virtual digital object. The experiment result is given and some future research directions are discussed.     

Procedural generation and real-time rendering of a marine ecosystem

Underwater scene is one of the most marvelous environments in the world. In this study, we present an efficient procedural modeling and rendering system to generate marine ecosystems for swim-through graphic applications. To produce realistic and natural underwater scenes, several techniques and algorithms have been presented and introduced. First, to distribute sealife naturally on a seabed, we employ an ecosystem simulation that considers the influence of the underwater environment. Second, we propose a two-level procedural modeling system to generate sealife with unique biological features. At the base level, a series of grammars are designed to roughly represent underwater sealife on a central processing unit（CPU）. Then at the fine level, additional details of the sealife are created and rendered using graphic processing units（GPUs）. Such a hybrid CPU-GPU framework best adopts sequential and parallel computation in modeling a marine ecosystem, and achieves a high level of performance.Third, the proposed system integrates dynamic simulations in the proposed procedural modeling process to support dynamic interactions between sealife and the underwater environment, where interactions and physical factors of the environment are formulated into parameters and control the geometric generation at the fine level. Results demonstrate that this system is capable of generating and rendering scenes with massive corals and sealife in real time.     

Cooperative localization method for multi-robot based on PF-EKF

A method of cooperative localization for multi-robot in an unknown environment is described. They share information and perform localization by using relative observations and necessary communication. At initial time, robots do not know their positions. Once the robot that can obtain the absolute position information has its position, other robots use particle filter to fuse relative observations and maintain a set of samples respectively representing their positions. When the particles are close to s Gsussian distribution after a number of steps, we switch to an EKF to track the pose of the robots. Simulation results and real experiment show that PF-EKF method combines the robustness of PF and the efficiency of EKF. Robots can share the absolute position information and effectively localize themselves in an unknown environment.     

Applying Virtual Reality to Molecular Graphics System

Mlecular graphics can be thought of as a window to the computer through which the chemist expresses ideas for computational evaluation and receives results in an understandable form.Furthermore,with beautiful graphic images it can give out the realistic molecular model like a real thing in real world.Molecule has various properties including volume,electronic,van der waals forces,etc.These properties are very important to understand the molecular world.So if the virtual reality tools are used,then the imaginary world can be studied intuitively by touching and feeling a tremendous amount of data.Computational chemistry generates such amount of molecular property data through supercomputing with molecular simulation experiment.One of the objects to investigate the molecular world is to understand the intermolecular interaction such as drug-receptor interaction.Another thing is to measure the geometrical data in molecular architecture.Virtual reality system provides the easiest way to meet these objects.This kind of simple system changes a numerical data set,which is very difficults to deal with,into a visible and understandable data set.Recently two functions of such a system were improved to get an insight into biomolecular interaction.The first one is a real time force generation during navigation in macromolecular environment.An cylindrical arrow shows the magnitude and direction of molecular force.The second one is to see a molecular vibration such as a concerted motion of the binding site in protein molecule.So one can understand th molecular shape change for drugreceptor docking procedure.But some problems which are difficult to solve still remain.     

PEJA: Progressive Energy-Efficient Join Processing for Sensor Networks

Sensor networks are widely used in many applications to collaboratively collect information from the physical environment. In these applications,the exploration of the relationship and linkage of sensing data within multiple regions can be naturally expressed by joining tuples in these regions. However,the highly distributed and resource-constraint nature of the network makes join a challenging query. In this paper,we address the problem of processing join query among different regions progressively and energy-efficiently in sensor networks. The proposed algorithm PEJA(Progressive Energy-efficient Join Algorithm) adopts an event-driven strategy to output the joining results as soon as possible,and alleviates the storage shortage problem in the in-network nodes. It also installs filters in the joining regions to prune unmatchable tuples in the early processing phase,saving lots of unnecessary transmissions. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real world data sets indicate that the PEJA scheme outperforms other join algorithms,and it is effective in reducing the number of transmissions and the delay of query results during the join processing.     

分布式虚拟环境中的一种场景动态划分算法—基于竞争的演化算法

With the development of networking technologies and computer graphics, distributed virtual environment (DVE) has become an important research area in computer science. In a DVE system, clients at different places can simultaneously explore a virtual world and interact with each other. How to build an efficient DVE system that can support large number of concurrent users is a challenge. In the paper, we discuss the way of partitioning the DVE world to balance the workload among different servers as well as minimize the inter-server communication. We present the existent mathematics mode and algorithms at first, and then give our algorithm, partitioning algorithm based on competition. Ex- periments are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm.     

Synchronization between audiovisual and haptic feeling for constructing edutainment systems

Virtual reality (VR) technology has become more and more mature over the last decade. Development of a virtual environment for training purpose is considered to be one of the most practical applications of the VR technology. Since the VR technology involves all kinds of sensors in exchanging information between the real world and the virtual environment, it is computationally intensive in terms of data processing at an individual sensor and information integration among all the sensors. In general, the information integration has to be well synchronized in order to meet the training needs. At the same time, real-time processing capability is also considered to be critical. Many more practical issues could be uncovered only when a virtual training environment is actually being developed. Based on this belief, this study experiments on the development of a virtual environment for training billiards players. The technical difficulties encountered and the corresponding resolutions are considered beneficial to the development of other practical virtual training environments. This paper summarizes the design and implementation details about our experimental virtual training environment for edutainment systems such as virtual billiard game, virtual air hockey game and virtual drum performance with the algorithms for the synchronization of the information from different sources.     

基于多体动力学理论的赛车游戏引擎的设计与实现

运动车辆的实时建模、动力学行为仿真是赛车虚拟环境中的重要组成部分。论文设计并实现了一实时赛车游戏引擎,在引擎车辆建模中提出了一种基于多体动力学理论实时逼真的赛车建模方法,对赛车的真实受力状况进行简化,模拟车辆的各种动力学行为和车辆运动的真实感绘制。并实现了引擎中的碰撞检测技术、音效处理技术、虚拟环境的实时绘制技术。增强用户漫游虚拟环境的沉浸感。     

人眼立体视觉空间与虚拟三维空间的几何映射关系理论分析

虚拟三维空间是现实世界的数字化三维空间,而人眼立体视觉空间则是人眼视觉系统对于现实世界或虚拟世界所形成的三维立体构象。传统上人眼直接观察现实世界,确立了人眼立体视觉空间与现实世界之间的几何对应关系。而人眼立体视觉空间与虚拟三维空间是否也存在对应的几何关系？以人眼立体视觉和虚拟三维场景为研究对象,根据双目视差原理,论述了人眼立体视觉的几何模型及视觉三维模型的表示形式。通过分析虚拟空间三维点元、屏幕视差及网膜视差等三者之间的内在几何关系,利用矩阵代数建立了虚拟空间与视觉空间之间的几何映射关系。这一映射关系表明视觉三维模型与虚拟三维模型之间存在一一对应关系,也反映了人眼视觉系统在虚拟空间中的可测量性质。本文创新性之处在于得到了视觉三维模型的完整表示,突破了传统上立体显示的定性感知,提供了定量分析的基础。这一工作对于在虚拟空间中的立体体验、虚拟交互以及立体测量等实践活动具有一定理论参考价值。     

一种虚拟镜像型交通物联网框架设计与实现

为解决目前中国交通信息分散、封闭、低效的现状,构建起城市道路交通“镜像型虚拟世界”,并与“物理实体世界”互联、互通和互反馈控制。提出了基于组件、以事件为中心的交通物联网仿真框架,运用VC＋＋2008和虚拟现实开发引擎Delta3D技术,开发面向物联网时代的智能交通公共服务平台,实现城市交通全样本、全时空、全过程的感知调控。     

A VE framework to study visual perception and action

In the real world, vision operates in harmony with self-motion yielding the observer to unambiguous perception of the three-dimensional (3D) space. In laboratory conditions, because of technical difficulties, researchers studying 3D perception have often preferred to use the substitute of a stationary observer, somehow neglecting aspects of the action-perception cycle. Recent results in visual psychophysics have proved that self-motion and visual processes interact, leading the moving observer to interpret a 3D virtual scene differently from a stationary observer. In this paper we describe a virtual environment (VE) framework which presents very interesting characteristics for designing experiments in visual perception during action. These characteristics arise in a number of ways from the design of a unique motion capture device. First, its accuracy and the minimal latency in position measurement; second, its ease of use and the adaptability to different display interfaces. Such a VE framework enables the experimenter to recreate stimulation conditions characterised by a degree of sensory coherence typical of the real world. Moreover, because of its accuracy and flexibility, the same device can be used as a measurement tool to perform elementary but essential calibration procedures. The VE framework has been used to conduct two studies which compare the perception of 3D variables of the environment in moving and in stationary observers under monocular vision. The first study concerns the perception of absolute distance, i.e. the distance separating an object and the observer. The second study refers to the perception of the orientation of a surface both in the absence and presence of conflicts between static and dynamic visual cues. In the two cases, the VE framework has enabled the design of optimal experimental conditions, permitting light to be shed on the role of action in 3D visual perception.     

基于Unity3D的仓储可视化编辑器

近年来,随着仓储业的快速发展和仓库物资种类的不断增加,传统的人工管理远远不能满足现代仓库管理的需要. 而能够提供实时、直观、沉浸式管理的三维可视化管理系统越来越受到仓库管理人员的青睐. 任何三维可视化系统的开发都需要一款无缝对接的编辑器. 本文提出的仓储可视化编辑器是针对仓储可视化系统的开发人员,可帮助开发人员迅速搭建一个真实的三维场景,缩短可视化系统的开发周期. 本文实现了基于Unity3D的仓储可视化编辑器,首先,实现了编辑器的总体框架. 然后,实现了3D交互层、统一通信接口、模型操作面板等功能.     

SKETCH'NDO: A framework for the creation of task-based serious games

We present SKETCH'NDO, a framework for the interactive design and creation of single-user task-based serious games in 3D virtual environments. The games are dimensionally congruent: inherently 2D tasks such as reading and writing are done in 2D, while manipulation tasks are 3D. The architecture of the system allows educators to design the tasks with a graphical editor that creates the game automatically. This editor does not require gaming expertise. It only needs educators to specify the correct ways of doing the task, without having to consider all possible erroneous learner's decisions. SKETCH'NDO provides a complete mechanism of monitoring and evaluation of the learner's performance that allows a precise assessment of the learning process. It offers a gradation of levels of assistance that can be fixed by educators or automatically adjusted to the trainee's skills. This way, the same task can be trained from a strictly conductist strategy to a fully constructivist one.     

一个沉浸式场景漫游系统的构建

虚拟现实技术,是一种可以创建和体验虚拟环境的计算机系统技术,在军事、游戏、室内设计等诸多领域都有着广泛的应用。一个沉浸式的虚拟现实系统,可以让用户完全沉浸在虚拟世界中,得到与真实世界近似相同的感受。在高精度定位跟踪系统的辅助下,利用visual studio开发环境和3ds max、virtools软件构建了一个沉浸式场景漫游系统,并给出了一个游戏应用示例和一个室内设计应用示例。     

基于场景语义的3D交互体系结构

借鉴真实世界的认知心理学原理,将虚拟场景的可视表达和语义信息结合起来共同服务于用户的交互过程,多种3D交互技术被融合在一个统一的交互框架内,使复杂虚拟环境中的3D用户界面更容易被用户理解和使用.通过增强场景图的语义处理能力,建立支持高层语义的3D用户界面体系结构,3D交互系统不仅在几何层上而且还能在语义层上支持交互任务的执行.最后介绍了一个应用实例.     

基于Unity平台的漫游交互系统的设计

随着网络及计算机技术的发展,3D实景虚拟漫游已经作为一种全新的展示在房产销售中普遍运用。本系统运用了3Dmax、Photoshop、Unity3D软件,参考现实广场小区,创建虚拟场景。为达到预期效果,通过骨骼动画及JavaScript语言实现控制角色移动转向等动作,用户可以对场景自主漫游、浏览,让用户真正沉浸在虚拟交互环境当中,实现用户与虚拟环境直接交互。