March 25-29, Alexandria, Virginia, USA

IEEE Virtual Reality Conference




Call for Participation   |    Program   |    Exhibits   |    Lab Demonstrations   |    Awards   |    Registration   |    Committee   |    Chairs Only



Calendar of Events
Keynote Speaker

Sponsors
IEEE

IEEE Computer Sciety

Naval Research Lab

Presence

ITT
SensAble



IEEE Virtual Reality Conference 2006 Laboratory Demonstrations

The Spatial Media Group
        "Immersive Representation of Musical
           Scale Properties"

        Julian Villegas and Michael Cohen
        University of Aizu


Virtual Experiences Research Group
        "Virtual Patients"
        "Mixed Environments for Rapid Generation of
          Engineering Design"

        Ben Lok
        University of Florida


Augmented Reality Lab
        "Compensating Indirect Scattering for Immersive
           and Semi-Immersive Projection Displays"

        Oliver Bimber and Anselm Grundhoefer
        Bauhaus University Weimar


Virtual Environments Lab
        "A Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy Application
           for Iraq War Post Traumatic Stress Disorder"

        Albert "Skip" Rizzo, Jarrell Pair and Ken Graap
        Institute for Creative Technologies (USC)
        and Virtually Better Inc.


VR Lab
        "Virtual Targets for Mortar Training"
        "Veritcal Vergence Calibration for
          Augmented Reality Displays"

        Dennis Brown and Mark Livingston
        Naval Research Lab


ID-Imag
        "MV Platform:
          A Real-Time Multi-Video Environment"

        Florian Geffray, Clément Ménier,
        Jean-Sébastien Franco, Jérémie Alla
        Bruno Raffin, Edmond Boyer
        INRIA Rhône-Alpes

3D Interaction Group
        "Display Size and Resolution Effects
          in Information Rich VEs"

        "IRVE Applications and Components"
        "3D Cloning Techniques for the
          Design of Building Structures"

        "SSWIM: Scaled and Scrolling World In Miniature"
        "Navigation Techniques for Multiscale
          Virtual Environments"

        "A Tangible User Interface System for
          CAVE Applications"

        Doug A. Bowman and Denis Gracanin
        Virginia Tech


Hirose and Hirota and Tanikawa Lab
        "Electromyogram Interface
        "Wearable Olfactory Display"
        "Real World Video Avatar: Rotational
          Holographic Display"

        "Controllable Water Particle Display"
        Shin'ichiro Eitoku
        University of Tokyo


Future Computing Lab
        "Let's Talk About UNC Charlotte:
          A Conversation with a Virtual Human"

        Larry F. Hodges
        University of North Carolina Charlotte


Laboratory of Integrated Systems (LSI)
        "Panoramic Image Capture and Display"
        Marcio Cabral, Celso Kurashima, Victor Gomes,
        Olavo Belloc, Leonardo Nomura, Fernanda Andrade,
        Daniel Balciunas, Lucas Dulley, Breno Santos,
        Mario Nagamura, Guido Lemos, Luiz Gonçalves
        Roseli Lopes, Marcelo K. Zuffo
        Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo









The Spatial Media Group
    Julian Villegas and Michael Cohen
    University of Aizu

Immersive Representation of Musical Scale Properties

Visitors will wear chromastereoptic eyewear as well as wireless headphones to visually and aurally express musical scale properties when they are stretched or compressed dynamically using the Helical Keyboard, a Java3D application developed in our laboratory. By interacting with this rich interface, the user can experiment with the dual nature of the musical scale (linear and cyclical) as well as the principles of the musical scales construction.

Contact:juloviyahoo.com

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Virtual Experiences Research Group
    Ben Lok
    University of Florida

Virtual Patients

This project allows medical students to interview a virtual patient to practice communication skills. Students naturally interact with life-sized virtual (projected onto a wall) people using speech and gestures. The system tracks the users head, body pose, and gestures in addition to using speech recognition software to drive a system that presents a virtual experience similar to standardized patients (paid actors used to train medical students).



Mixed Environments for Rapid Generation of Engineering Design

We have developed a pipeline for rapid integration of real objects, such as tools and parts in engineering designs, into a ME. Instead of weeks to model, track, and integrate objects, this has been reduced to hours to get objects such as pliers, circuit boards, etc. into a ME. The system uses a combination of a laser scanner, multiple camera tracking, and a HMD and TabletPC for interaction. We have partnered with NASA engineers at NASA Langley Research Center to obtain content and end-user feedback of our ME system.

Contact:lokcise.ufl.edu

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Augmented Reality Lab
    Oliver Bimber and Anselm Grundhoefer
    Bauhaus University Weimar

Compensating Indirect Scattering for Immersive and Semi-Immersive Projection Displays

Concavely shaped projection screens, such as CAVEs, two-sided workbenches, domes, or cylinders scatter a fraction of light to other screen portions. The amount of indirect illumination adds to the directly projected image and causes the displayed content to appear partially inconsistent and washed out. We have developed a reverse radiosity method that compensates first-level and higher-level secondary scattering effects in real-time. The images appear more brilliant and uniform when reducing the scattering contribution. A numerical solution is approximated with Jacobi iteration for a sparse-matrix linear equation system on the GPU. Efficient data structures allow packing the required data into textures which are processed by pixel shaders. Frame-buffer objects are used for a fast exchange of intermediate iteration results, and enable computations with floating point precision. Our algorithms result can be optimized for quality or performance.

Contact:oliver.bimbermedien.uni-weimar.de

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Virtual Environments Lab
    Albert "Skip" Rizzo, Jarrell Pair and Ken Graap
    Institute for Creative Technologies (U of Southern California) and Virtually Better Inc.


A Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy Application for Iraq War Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

The USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) has initiated a project that is creating an immersive virtual reality system for the treatment of Iraq War veterans diagnosed with combat-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The treatment environment is based on a creative approach to recycling and adding to the virtual assets that were initially built for the combat tactical simulation and commercially available X-Box game, Full Spectrum Warrior. The first version of the application has been created and is designed to resemble a middle-eastern city, and outlying village and desert areas. The scenario also supports a variety of user perspectives including, walking alone or within a patrol of flocking virtual soldiers, and from the vantage point of being inside a vehicle (i.e., HUMVEE, helicopter, etc.).

Contact:arizzousc.edu

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VRLab
    Dennis Brown and Mark Livingston
    Naval Research Lab


Virtual Targets for Mortar Training

Training and rehearsal are vital to maintaining warfighting capabilities. In live fire training, the cost of destroying real targets is prohibitive. Substitutes are non-reactive, stay in fixed locations, and rarely resemble real targets. This limits the quality of education; trainees are not given live fire training for firing upon moving, reactive targets. We have built a prototype augmented reality system for fire support team training. Head-mounted displays and video touchscreens allow trainees and trainers to view and control synthetic forces that appear to exist in, and interact with, the real world.


Veritcal Vergence Calibration for Augmented Reality Displays

Stereo and bi-ocular head-mounted displays (HMDs) require the user to fuse two images into a coherent picture of the three-dimensional world. A vertical disparity in the graphics causes diplopia for users trying to fuse the real and virtual objects simultaneously. We implement three methods to measure and correct this disparity and assess them with a collection of a single model of optical see-through HMD.

Contact:dbrownait.nrl.navy.mil

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ID-Imag
    Florian Geffray, Clément Ménier, Jean-Sébastien Franco, Jérémie Allard, Bruno Raffin, Edmond Boyer
    INRIA Rhône-Alpe


MV Platform: A Real-Time Multi-Video Environment

This platform presents a scalable architecture to compute, visualize and interact in real time with 3D dynamic textured models of real scenes. This architecture is designed for mixed reality applications requiring such dynamic models, such as tele- immersion. The system is built upon of 3 main components: image acquisition, based on standard firewire cameras; model computation, based on a distribution scheme over a cluster of PC and using an optimal shape-from-silhouette algorithm ; model visualization, which can be achieved with multiple projectors. The distribution scheme ensures the scalability of the system, interactive frame rates and low latency.

Contact:bruno.raffinimag.fr

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3D Interaction Group
    Doug A. Bowman and Denis Gracanin
    Virginia Tech


Display Size and Resolution Effects in Information Rich VEs
We will demonstrate an Information-Rich Virtual Environment we designed as a testbed to evaluate how display size and resolution affect task performance. We compared VisBlocks (a large-sized high-resolution display) with a rear-projected screen (a large-sized low-resolution display) and an IBM T221 LCD monitor (used as either small-sized high-resolution or small-sized low-resolution display).
Contact:bowmanvt.edu

IRVE Applications and Components
Information display components are presented in the context of a biomedical visualization of immune system simulation (PathSim) as well as a cell and chemical environment (CML). These techniques are being evaluated and improved to increase the information bandwidth between user and visualization.
Contact:bowmanvt.edu

3D Cloning techniques for the Design of building Structures
Traditional 3D interaction techniques are not adequate for the design of complex scenes containing hundreds of objects. We will demonstrate new techniques for the task of cloning, allowing users to efficiently and precisely create complex, repetitive structures in an immersive VE.
Contact:bowmanvt.edu

SSWIM: Scaled and Scrolling World In Miniature
The typical WIM (World In Miniature) technique was limited in its utility for worlds of various scale. Overcoming this is the Scaled Scrolling WIM, which was created through successive design iterations leading to a technique allowing scaling and scrolling without impacting user performance.
Contact:bowmanvt.edu

Navigation Techniques for Multiscale Virtual Environments
VEs that require viewing and interaction with the scene at multiple scales require specialized navigation techniques to allow the user to travel both between and within levels of scale. We will demonstrate several usable techniques in the context of an immersive VE for human anatomy education.
Contact:bowmanvt.edu

A Tangible User Interface System for CAVE Applications
This work presents a new 3D user interface system for a CAVE application based on Tangible User Interfaces. Card-like props tracked via the ARToolkit are used as input devices, and no other wired electrical devices are required. Based on this interface, users can explore fundamental 3D interaction tasks in a CAVE system.
Contact:gracaninvt.edu

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Hirose and Hirota and Tanikawa Lab
    Shin'ichiro Eitoku
    University of Tokyo


Electromyogram Interface

The electromyogram (EMG) interface has been implemented in CABIN immersive multiscreen display in our laboratory. A demonstration on the EMG interface will be presented. The subject can perform a brief controlling of a simple virtual object on PC monitor.


Wearable Olfactory Display

In this research, we constructed and evaluated a wearable olfactory display to present the odor information in an outdoor environment. We will show two types of wearable olfactory display. The prototype1 wearable olfactory display system is presenting the odor by using the air pump to convey the odor air to the user's nose through tubes. The prototype2 wearable olfactory display system is using inkjet head device to inject minute odor droplets for odor presentation. And this prototype2 system is detecting the user's breathing pattern to find the best timing for the droplet injection.


Real World Video Avatar: Rotational Holographic Display

To realize a photo-realistic avatar in the real world, we propose new approach to enhance the concept of video avatar to real world. By changing the images on the display panel according to the direction that the display is facing, the system can present video avatar which can be seen from all around in the real world. Based on this concept, we developed prototype system; this system consists of tablet PC with privacy filter and rotating mechanism.


Controllable Water Particle Display

As a system the virtual space and the real space coexist naturally and by which we can realize the spatial nature of would, we developed a prototype system using water drops as particles. In this system, a cluster of water drops, falling from a tank, is designed to form a planar surface. Then, patterns of images are projected from below towards the falling water drops. By projecting a set of tomographic images according to the position of water drops, three-dimensional objects can be observed without wearing a special apparatus.

Contact:eitokucyber.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp

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Future Computing Lab
    Larry F. Hodges
    University of North Carolina Charlotte


Let's Talk About UNC Charlotte: A Conversation with a Virtual Human

The Future Computing Lab at UNC Charlotte has been working on a variety of research projects in the areas of human-virtual human interaction, 3D user interfaces, VR travel techniques, computer vision, and computer game design. Visitors can learn more about these and other projects by chatting with one of our interactive virtual characters.

Contact:lfhodgesuncc.edu

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Laboratory of Integrated Systems (LSI)
    Marcio Cabral, Celso Kurashima, Victor Gomes, Olavo Belloc, Leonardo Nomura, Fernanda Andrade, Daniel Balciunas, Lucas Dulley, Breno Santos, Mario Nagamura, Guido Lemos, Luiz Gonçalves, Roseli Lopes, Marcelo K. Zuffo
    Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo


Panoramic Image Capture and Display

Virtual explorations of unknown or dangerous places can be of significant advantage. Instead of using human beings, one can utilize robots with cameras to explore such places. In our system we use a ring of cameras to capture 360 degrees of field of view. This ring of cameras is mounted on a robot platform. Using computer vision algorithms, we are able to project these images in a virtual reality environment, like a 5-sided CAVE. This demonstration version will show a simulation of how the images are projected in a CAVE environment. In this simulation, the user is able to explore the panoramic image using a computer monitor. With the help of a joystick, the user will be able to control the robot carrying the cameras.

Contact:mcabrallsi.usp.br

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