VR Applications

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VR Applications

• Jyun-Ming Chen
• Fall 1999

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Application Domains

• medicine
• rehabilitation
• entertainment
• military
• business
• robotics
• manufacturing
• ...

• anatomy trainer
• surgical simulator
• wheelchair-VR
• talking glove
• chemical design
• flight simulator
• battle training
• interior design
• tele-operation

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Anatomy Trainer

• ... the medical knowledge has improved a lot, but
  the teaching methods havent changed much...
• http//www.avrs.com/antares/antares/cadaver.html

• visible human project

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Films on Medical Applications
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Military Aerospace

• Simulation training
• Increased technological complexity
• remote/team simulation
• require flexible, upgradable, networkable
  technology
• Typical applications
• troop training
• battle preparation
• mission debriefing
• new weapon preparation

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SIMNET tank trainer network

• Motivation
• DARPA projects
• reduce training cost
• increased safety
• reduce environmental impact
• Details
• partially immersive M1 tank, with navigation,
  weapons, sensors, displays

• resident computer keeps a copy of battle field
• trees, roads, buildings,...
• communication
• intercom voice/electronic msgs
• dead reckoning to minimize network traffic

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SIMNET

• trainee practiced enemy force 3 times their size
• SAFOR (semi-automatic forces)
• enemy forces act as intelligent
• move in pre-programmed formation

• stealth vehicle
• observer on the battle
• can recreate the real battle use the data for
  subsequent training

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ASW antisubmarine warfare

• Motivation
• radar display produce operator overload
• create new displays that are more natural to
  understand
• 3D ASW system
• stereo, hi-res HMD 3D Sound
• gesture voice controlled

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Virtual Stinger Trainer

• plastic mock-up stinger
• 3D mouse to track pos/orient of launcher
• simulate
• weapon firing sequence, missile flight
  characteristics, target behavior
• keep track of hit/miss ratio

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Astronaut Training

• Motivation
• zero gravity activity is complex challenging
• object manipulation is unpredictable
• under water
• buoyancy, but with water friction
• airplane step descent
• short periods of time

• Work
• space shuttle extravehicular activity
• Hubble space telescope repair maintenance
• trainee sits on sensorized chair
• HMD (telescope, shuttle, sky)
• data glove to grab instruments
• thruster control

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Virtual Cockpit

• Motivation
• with modern weapons, displays, avionics, pilots
  suffer from sensorial overload
• use VR to study the best man-machine interface

• Design Issues
• network
• pilot state monitor
• voice command
• display quality (texture mapping)
• mission management
• tactile feedback
• using see-thru display with real control panels

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Films on Aerospace APs
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Business

• advertising
• VR promotion leading-edge products
• office building walkthrough
• finance data display
• teleconferencing
• litigation
• realistic reconstruction of scene

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n-Vision

• interactive immersive visualization of
  n-dimensional data

• nested Cartesian coordinate system
• f(x1, x2, x3, x4, x5)
• with origin at (x3, x4, x5)
• construct f(x1, x2, x3, x4, x5 )
• currency exchange
• f(price, time, foreign interest rate, ...)
• HMD Data glove
• grab inner graph within outer C.S.

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Interior Design (I)

• Besides walkthrough
• lighting design
• radiosity
• quantitative results (lux)
• Lightscape

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Interior Design (II)

• air conditioning modeling
• visualize airflow to ensure that air-velocity and
  temperature standards are met
• Using Division
• distributed computing

Living Environment System Lab (Matsushita)
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Robotics

• VR applications
• off-line programming
• realistic modeling of robot environment
• test on virtual robot then download to real
  robots
• Tele-operation

• mechanical arm with great versatility
• can be self-adapting react to changes of the
  environment
• two types
• industrial (structured environment)
• service (unstructured under human control)

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Tele-operation

• human in the control loop
• shield operator from dangerous environment
• historically precedes VR but VR can help
• operator training
• information of on-line control

• synthetic imaging to aid visualization
• real image may be corrupted (steam, smoke,
  insufficient lighting
• move-and-wait phantom robot provides a visual cue

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Product Design

• traditional CAD geometry aspects
• with VR
• life cycle concerns safety, ergonomics,
  maintenance, assembly
• reduce the number of full-size prototypes

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Other Manufacturing

• Product servicing
• superimpose textual and graphical info over the
  image of serviced product
• also used in training

• Plant Design
• use VR to help the positioning of equipment on
  the plant floor for best production component
  flow

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Review Questions

• Propose your final project in class in the format
  demonstrated (15 min).
• Survey visible human data set
• What is dead-reckoning and how does it help
  reduce network load?
• Find another application of n-dimension data
  visualization.