Using Visual Cues of Contact to Improve Interactive Manipulation of Virtual Objects in Industrial Assembly/Maintenance Simulations

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Using Visual Cues of Contact to Improve
Interactive Manipulation of Virtual Objects in
Industrial Assembly/Maintenance Simulations
Jean Sreng, Anatole Lécuyer, Christine Mégard,
Claude Andriot
jean.sreng_at_cea.fr
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Outline

• Introduction
• Type of information to visualize
• Related work
• Visual cues of contact
• Contact glyphs
• Contact lights
• Preliminary evaluation
• Conclusion

OUTLINE
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Outline

• Introduction
• Type of information to visualize
• Related work
• Visual cues of contact
• Contact glyphs
• Contact lights
• Preliminary evaluation
• Conclusion

OUTLINE
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Introduction

• Context Virtual prototyping, assembly/maintenance
  simulations
• Problem Complex industrial geometries
• Multiple contact
• Hard manipulation

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Two types of information to visualize

• For all contacts
• Local minimal distances Johnson et al., 03
• First point
• Second point
• Contacts
• Contact point and orientation
• Contact force

Imagine two models that have just collided.
This collision can be represented at a single
point on each surface .... If the models move
apart, this pair of points tracks the local
minimum distance and represents the potential
future contacts between entire sections of these
two models. Johnson et al., 03
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Related work

• Visual aids McNeely et al., 06
• Visual glyphs Redon, 02
• Visual cues Wanger et al., 92

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Visual cues

• We have chosen to develop two novel types of
  visual feedback
• Contact glyphs
• Proximity
• Effort
• Hybrid
• Contact lights

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Outline

• Introduction
• Type of information to visualize
• Related work
• Visual cues of contact
• Contact glyphs
• Contact lights
• Preliminary evaluation
• Conclusion

OUTLINE
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Proximity Contact - Forces
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Proximity glyphs
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Proximity glyphs

• Video

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Effort glyphs
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Effort glyphs

• Video

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Hybrid glyphs
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Hybrid glyphs
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Hybrid glyphs
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Hybrid glyphs

• Video

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Glyph filtering

• Reduce the number of displayed glyphs
• Filtering technique based on users motion

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Outline

• Introduction
• Type of information to visualize
• Related work
• Visual cues of contact
• Contact glyphs
• Contact lights
• Preliminary evaluation
• Conclusion

OUTLINE
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Contact lights

• Lights are disposed at the contact point
• Do not overload the visual feedback
• Can be combined with glyphs

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Without visual feedback
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Spherical lights
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Conical lights
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Contact lights

• Video

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Contact lights and hybrid glyphs

• Video

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Outline

• Introduction
• Type of information to visualize
• Related work
• Visual cues of contact
• Contact glyphs
• Contact lights
• Preliminary evaluation
• Conclusion

OUTLINE
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Preliminary evaluation

• Collect data about users preferences
• Participants were asked to perform an industrial
  assembly operation
• Without visual cues
• With each visual cues
• They had to fill a subjective questionnaire

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Experimental setup
P4 2.4GHz / NVidia Quadro 4
Physical Engine (GVM/LMD)
Graphical Engine (VTK)
SpacePilot
30 FPS
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Experimental evaluation

• 18 participants
• Procedure
• Learning phase (20 min)
• Testing phase (20 min)
• All the visual glyphs were presented
• They were asked to complete the assembly
• They have to test successively all glyphs
• They were no time limited
• They could freely test again any glyph
• Fill subjective questionnaire (5 min)

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Collected data

• Rank 5 visual effects according to 4 preference
  criteria
• 5 visual effects
• Apparition of a light
• Apparition of a glyph
• Color change
• Size change
• Deformation
• 4 criteria
• Understanding the blocking situations
• Perception of distances
• Perception of contact forces
• Focus on contact area
• Preferences among the shapes disk / sphere /
  arrow ?
• Preferences about filtering with or without ?

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Results

• ?2 test on ranks and parametric ANOVA test on
  rank used as value
• Participants were able to associate effects and
  visual cues
• Contact lights Preferred to focus attention
• Some found it useful for distances appreciation
  Kjelldahl et al.
• Decrease the visual workload
• Can suggest information in occlusion context

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Discussion

• Glyphs Preferred for distances and contact
  forces
• Are reported to help precise manipulation
• Color gradient is easily understood (distances)
• Size change are globally well appreciated
• Deformation Preferred for contact forces
• Can be naturally perceived (Meet up the
  pseudo-haptic effect Lécuyer et al., 00)

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Conclusion

• We proposed visual cues to improve manipulation
  in industrial assembly/maintenance context
• Glyphs
• Arrows, disks, sphere
• Proximity, Effort, Hybrid
• Filtering
• Lights
• Preliminary evaluation suggested that the visual
  cues and their associated visual effects seemed
  useful

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Further work

• Quantitative evaluation in complex industrial
  context
• Compare visual feedback and haptic or audio
  feedback
• Develop contextual visual cues
• Adapt to different situations
• Complementary technique could be investigated
• Camera motions
• Automatic and multiple viewpoints
• Magnifying effects
• Transparency on occlusions

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Question
?
Thank you for listening
Questions ?