Virtual pottery: a virtual 3D audiovisual interface using natural hand motions

In this paper, we present our approach towards designing and implementing a virtual 3D sound sculpting interface that creates audiovisual results using hand motions in real time. In the interface “Virtual Pottery,” we use the metaphor of pottery creation in order to adopt the natural hand motions to 3D spatial sculpting. Users can create their own pottery pieces by changing the position of their hands in real time, and also generate 3D sound sculptures based on pre-existing rules of music composition. The interface of Virtual Pottery can be categorized by shape design and camera sensing type. This paper describes how we developed the two versions of Virtual Pottery and implemented the technical aspects of the interfaces. Additionally, we investigate the ways of translating hand motions into musical sound. The accuracy of the detection of hand motions is crucial for translating natural hand motions into virtual reality. According to the results of preliminary evaluations, the accuracy of both motion-capture tracking system and portable depth sensing camera is as high as the actual data. We carried out user studies, which took into account information about the two exhibitions along with the various ages of users. Overall, Virtual Pottery serves as a bridge between the virtual environment and traditional art practices, with the consequence that it can lead to the cultivation of the deep potential of virtual musical instruments and future art education programs.     

Automatic Generation of Virtual Woodblocks and Multicolor Woodblock Printing

In this paper, we study a method to synthesize a multicolor virtual woodblock print by using several virtual woodblocks. It consists of two sections: carving and printing, to synthesize a virtual print. In the carving section, virtual woodblocks are generated by a user with supporting of an automatically carving method based on feature extraction of a gray value image. And woodblocks are also generated automatically by using a full-color image as a draft. In the printing section, a "paper sheet", a "printing brush" and "ink" are prepared in addition to the "woodblock" in the virtual space and the user synthesizes a woodblock print interactively. As the printing factors, a color of ink, a moisture value and a grain change the finish of the print. Using several virtual woodblocks and printing to a paper sheet in succession, a printing image of each woodblock is combined based on the printing factors and a multicolor virtual prints is synthesized.     

Virtual Bounds: a teleoperated mixed reality

This paper introduces a mixed reality workspace that allows users to combine physical and computer-generated artifacts, and to control and simulate them within one fused world. All interactions are captured, monitored, modeled and represented with pseudo-real world physics. The objective of the presented research is to create a novel system in which the virtual and physical world would have a symbiotic relationship. In this type of system, virtual objects can impose forces on the physical world and physical world objects can impose forces on the virtual world. Virtual Bounds is an exploratory study allowing a physical probe to navigate a virtual world while observing constraints, forces, and interactions from both worlds. This scenario provides the user with the ability to create a virtual environment and to learn to operate real-life probes through its virtual terrain.     

A Virtual Reality Interface for Space Planning Tasks

Manipulating and assembling elements in a 3D space is a task which interests a huge number of potential applications whether they deal with real or abstract objects. Direct manipulation techniques in traditional interactive systems use 2D devices and do not allow an easy manipulation of 3D objects. To facilitate user interaction, we have studied direct manipulation techniques in a virtual reality environment. A VR interface is naturally object-oriented and allows the definition of real-world metaphors. Operators can thus work in the virtual world in a similar way to the real world: they perceive the position of objects through the depth cue of stereo view, and can grab and push them in any direction by means of avirtual handuntil they reach their destination. They can put an object on top of another and line it up with other objects. We model the virtual world as ajob-orientedworld which is governed by a few simple rules which facilitate object positioning. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation strategies to obtain a real-time performance on a low-level workstation.     

Windows下的虚拟网络存储的设计与实现

介绍了虚拟存储的形式及实现层次，并在Windows平台下，利用现有的网络环境，在主机设备驱动层实现基于块存储的虚拟网络存储的一种方法，主机通过运行驱动程序将整个或一部分网络存储空间映射为本地的磁盘，然后像对本地盘一样对该盘进行格式化、创建文件系统、存储文件，从而实现网络存储。整个虚拟空间既可以映射为主机的单一硬盘，构成海量存储器，也可将虚拟空间根据不同主机要求映射为不同容量的虚拟磁盘，构成网络移动磁盘。     

计算机虚拟现实系统的开发

本文以虚拟小镇为例,首先构造出虚拟小镇系统框架;通过建立虚拟场景模型,对虚拟场景驱动,编程控制场景,快速建立并实现简单的虚拟小镇系统。研究表明,利用虚拟现实工具可以快速建立简单的虚拟现实系统,大大缩短虚拟现实系统的开发周期,节省资金和人力。在此基础上,对系统的基本功能加以扩展,加入一些分析功能以实现工程上的应用,有助于虚拟现实技术在工程上的进一步研究。     

VSculpt : a distributed virtual sculpting environment for collaborative design

A collaborative virtual sculpting system supports a team of geographically separated designers/engineers connected by networks to participate in designing three-dimensional (3D) virtual engineering tools or sculptures. It encourages international collaboration at a minimal cost. However, in order for the system to be useful, two factors need to be addressed: intuitiveness and real-time interaction. Although a lot of effort has been put into developing virtual sculpting environments, only limited work addresses collaborative virtual sculpting. This is because in order to support real-time collaborative virtual sculpting, many challenging issues need to be addressed. We propose a collaborative virtual sculpting framework, called VSculpt. Through adapting some techniques we developed earlier and integrating them with some techniques developed here, the proposed framework provides a real-time intuitive environment for collaborative design. In particular, it addresses issues on efficient rendering and transmission of deformable objects, intuitive object deformation using the CyberGlove and concurrent object deformation by multiple clients. We demonstrate and evaluate the performance of the proposed framework through a number of experiments.     

Handling of Virtual Contact in Immersive Virtual Environments: Beyond Visuals

This paper addresses the issue of improving the perception of contact that users make with purely virtual objects in virtual environments. Because these objects have no physical component, the user's perceptual understanding of the material properties of the object, and of the nature of the contact, is hindered, often limited solely to visual feedback. Many techniques for providing haptic feedback to compensate for the lack of touch in virtual environments have been proposed. These systems have increased our understanding of the nature of how humans perceive contact. However, providing effective, general-purpose haptic feedback solutions has proven elusive. We propose a more-holistic approach, incorporating feedback to several modalities in concert. This paper describes a prototype system we have developed for delivering vibrotactile feedback to the user. The system provides a low-cost, distributed, portable solution for incorporating vibrotactile feedback into various types of systems. We discuss different parameters that can be manipulated to provide different sensations, propose ways in which this feedback can be combined with feedback of other modalities to create a better understanding of virtual contact, and describe possible applications.     

Haptic sculpting of multi-resolution B-spline surfaces with shaped tools

In this paper, we first propose an implicit surface to B-spline surface haptic interface, which provides both force and torque feedback. We then present a new haptic sculpting system for B-spline surfaces with shaped tools of implicit surface. In the physical world, people touch or sculpt with their fingers or tools, instead of just manipulating points. Shaped virtual sculpting tools help users to relate the virtual modeling process to physical-world experience. Various novel haptic sculpting operations are developed to make the sculpting of B-spline surfaces more intuitive. Wavelet-based multi-resolution tools are provided to let modelers adjust the resolution of sculpture surfaces and thus the scale of deformation can be easily controlled. Moreover, sweep editing and 3D texture have been implemented by taking advantage of both the wavelet technique and haptic sculpting tools.     

A Survey on 3D Virtual Object Manipulation: From the Desktop to Immersive Virtual Environments

Interactions within virtual environments often require manipulating 3D virtual objects. To this end, researchers have endeavoured to find efficient solutions using either traditional input devices or focusing on different input modalities, such as touch and mid‐air gestures. Different virtual environments and diverse input modalities present specific issues to control object position, orientation and scaling: traditional mouse input, for example, presents non‐trivial challenges because of the need to map between 2D input and 3D actions. While interactive surfaces enable more natural approaches, they still require smart mappings. Mid‐air gestures can be exploited to offer natural manipulations mimicking interactions with physical objects. However, these approaches often lack precision and control. All these issues and many others have been addressed in a large body of work. In this article, we survey the state‐of‐the‐art in 3D object manipulation, ranging from traditional desktop approaches to touch and mid‐air interfaces, to interact in diverse virtual environments. We propose a new taxonomy to better classify manipulation properties. Using our taxonomy, we discuss the techniques presented in the surveyed literature, highlighting trends, guidelines and open challenges, that can be useful both to future research and to developers of 3D user interfaces.     

基于三维输入设备的虚拟场景控制方法

在视景仿真中能够精确地控制虚拟场景中的对象模型是增强系统交互性的重要手段。该文分析了虚拟场景中三维模型对象和视点的控制方法，重点介绍了基于3D输入设备的对象控制方法。在详细分析3D输入没备SpaceBall4000的特点、工作原理和应用技术的基础上，在VC -Vega—Creator一体化建模仿真开发环境中基于该3D输入设备实现了虚拟场景中三维模型对象和视点的6自由度精确控制，提供了应用三维输入设备控制虚拟场景的一种方法。     

A Sensorized Garment Controlled Virtual Robotic Wheelchair

This paper presents the design and performance of a body-machine-interface (BoMI) system, where a user controls a robotic 3D virtual wheelchair with the signals derived from his/her shoulder and elbow movements. BoMI promotes the perspective that system users should no longer be operators of the engineering design but should be an embedded part of the functional design. This BoMI system has real-time controllability of robotic devices based on user-specific dynamic body response signatures in high-density 52-channel sensor shirt. The BoMI system not only gives access to the user’s body signals, but also translates these signals from user’s body to the virtual reality device-control space. We have explored the efficiency of this BoMI system in a semi-cylinderic 3D virtual reality system. Experimental studies are conducted to demonstrate, how this transformation of human body signals of multiple degrees of freedom, controls a robotic wheelchair navigation task in a 3D virtual reality environment. We have also presented how machine learning can enhance the interface to adapt towards the degree of freedoms of human body by correcting the errors performed by the user.     

Head-Tracked Stereo Viewing with Two-Handed 3 D Interaction for Animated Character Construction

In this paper, we demonstrate how a new interactive 3 D desktop metaphor based on two-handed 3 D direct manipulation registered with head-tracked stereo viewing can be applied to the task of constructing animated characters. In our configuration, a six degree-of-freedom head-tracker and CrystalEyes shutter glasses are used to produce stereo images that dynamically follow the user head motion. 3 D virtual objects can be made to appear at a fixed location in physical space which the user may view from different angles by moving his head. To construct 3 D animated characters, the user interacts with the simulated environment using both hands simultaneously: the left hand, controlling a Spaceball, is used for 3 D navigation and object movement, while the right hand, holding a 3 D mouse, is used to manipulate through a virtual tool metaphor the objects appearing in front of the screen. In this way, both incremental and absolute interactive input techniques are provided by the system. Hand-eye coordination is made possible by registering virtual space exactly to physical space, allowing a variety of complex 3 D tasks necessary for constructing 3 D animated characters to be performed more easily and more rapidly than is possible using traditional interactive techniques. The system has been tested using both Polhemus Fastrak and Logitech ultrasonic input devices for tracking the head and 3 D mouse.     

Indoor space art design based on immersive VR and embedded system

Indoor space systems are mainly used in outdoor environments, but indoor navigation systems are still under development. This article introduces indoor spatial analysis based on virtual reality to people who help in indoor environments. Work is done with the mechanisms and methods used for storage, dynamic reconstruction, and navigation in 3D virtual space using databases. The characteristics of the room are shown in the database table. The proposed Virtual Reality Environment Modeling (VREM) method is used to create a 3D image to analyze the room space. The client browser requests the virtual world through the server that provides the URL. The selected virtual world and server virtual format is returned to the client. The new 3D simulation embedded system is used to act as an agent for the behavior of simulation embedded system and other objects on the Internet and their associated syntactic structures. This method is first applied to the forward transform 3D to enhance the virtual and reconstructed images of the discrete cosine transform. Effectively view large virtual worlds and easily modify them. The size, shape, or other aspects of the virtual world's elements can be changed by changing the data in the database. Finally, virtual block matching algorithms are applied to analyze virtual indoor components or objects to provide better results than existing methods.     

虚拟游戏场景中的模型研究

游戏游戏建筑模型是虚拟虚拟游戏模型中的基本对象,已有的对游戏建筑的表示局限于某一层次级别,比如块模型、带屋顶的模型、结构模型和室内模型.引入了连续层次级别这一概念来对地理信息系统中的建筑进行表示和建模,而连续层次级别方法统一了虚拟三维游戏模型中不同类型的建筑的表示.     

Modelangelo: a subtractive 5-axis robotic arm for rapid prototyping

A PC-based, CAD-driven, 5-axis rapid prototyping (RP) robotic system that uses subtractive technology is presented. ModelAngelo, as it is called, consists of six integrated hardware and software subsystems. The system utilizes a virtual 3D CAD model to produce a set of commands used to control a 5-axis robotic setup to move the cutting tool, the tip of which is a heated wire, into a workpiece block (polystyrene foam or wax) to form complex-shaped objects.The user provides a 3D CAD model of the object to be sculpted. ModelAngelo_Software generates layered contoured slices at predetermined incremental steps. It builds up a data file that contains the corresponding cutting tool radial, angular, elevation and rotational positions of the modeled work. Then ModelAngelo_{PortMessenger} feeds the computer parallel port with consecutive commands that are read by ModelAngelo_Controller. Consequently, ModelAngelo_ReadNFeed performs the commands and sends feedback signals to the processor. The actuators then place the tool tip and the workpiece in their respective cutting positions via ModelAngelo_Mechanisms, which puts the model and the tip tool in the cutting position, where ModelAngelo_TipTool cutting-by-heat role starts.     

增强现实中虚拟物体制作的研究

增强现实是把计算机产生的虚拟物体合成到用户看到的真实世界中的一种技术。介绍了增强现实中虚拟物体所涉及的一些关键技术,包括虚拟物体的建模、摄像头标定、骨骼动画以及虚拟场景的优化,说明了如何将这些技术应用到实际系统中。     

A Translucent Sketchpad for the Virtual Table Exploring Motion-based Gesture Recognition

The Virtual Table presents stereoscopic graphics to a user in a workbench-like setting. For this device, a user interface and new interaction techniques have been developed based on transparent props -a tracked hand-held pen and a pad. These props, particularly the pad, are augmented with 3D graphics from the Virtual Table's display that can serve as a palette for tools and controls as well as a window-like see-through interface, a plane-shaped and through-the-plane tool, supporting a variety of new interaction techniques. This paper reports on an extension of this user-interface design space which uses gestural input to create and control solid geometries for CAD and conceptual design. The application of gestural interfaces is a common method for interacting with virtual environments on a habitual and natural basis. The motion-based gesture recognition presented here uses Fuzzy Logic to support a predictable, flexible, and efficient learning process. This new interaction paradigm greatly increases the Virtual Table's suitability for design tasks. Traditional CAD dialogue can be combined with intuitive rapid sketching of geometry on the pad. Additionally, the resulting events and objects can be associated with scene details below the translucent tablet.     

基于虚拟现实的煤矿设备装配仿真系统研究

针对煤矿大型设备装配存在拆装繁琐和成本高的问题,以采煤机、液压支架、掘进机和提升机为研究对象,采用虚拟现实技术设计并实现了一套由虚拟装配子系统、场景仿真与漫游子系统组成的虚拟装配与仿真系统.利用Maya对大型设备建模,通过VS程序设计,在Unity中进行交互控制,实现了设备的虚拟装配与拆卸、采煤工作面的虚拟仿真漫游功能.系统有效地提高了训练效果,形象逼真地再现了煤矿井下生产过程,具有良好的沉浸性和交互性.测试表明:经该仿真系统训练与使用,有效提高了设备实际装配与拆卸能力,同时降低了成本,具有显著的实际应用效果.