Virtual Hand: A Virtual Reality InterfaceDr Manolya Kavakli Tuesday 25th October 2005 at 11am
AbstractIf the hands of an artist (sculptor, painter, or designer) could speak, they would tell us more about the nature of the creative task they are engaged in, thus we would be able to simulate the creative processes. Imagine that just by drawing a room you could find yourself fully immersed in that space, or by shaping a virtual sculpture with your hands, you could model and touch its 3D physical model. If a complex system could decode the sign language and reasoning of the artist's hands motions and thoughts, it would be possible to support creativity by stimulating the right set of cognitive actions with the interface. The purpose of this seminar is to discuss the problems of current interfaces for sketch and hand motion recognition and demonstrate a method to construct an interactive 3D model from a combination of sketches drawn in three-dimensional (3D) space using the user's hands as dynamic input devices. We developed an interface"Virtual Hand" in OpenGL environment that recognises simple hand-gestures of a designer via a pair of datagloves, produces the 3D model of object sketched in 3D space, and generate it on a head mounted display. We used approximation algorithms in the production of real-time interactive computer graphics providing key parameters that carry information about the design concept. We will demonstrate the outcomes of our research studies for Virtual Hand, discuss the potential application areas, and address the issues for further developments in the area. Short resumeDr. Kavakli has been working on user interface design for 14 years. Dr Kavakli gained her BSc (1987), MSc (1990) and PhD (1995) degrees from Istanbul Technical University, developing interactive systems and methodologies for design computing. She worked as an Associate Professor in Design Science at Istanbul Technical University until 1999. Her research interests are in the intersection of a range of disciplines, such as cognitive science, design science, and computer science. After working as the course coordinator of the first Computer Science (Games Technology) degree in Australia and teaching Computer Games Design, User Interface Design, Online Multimedia and Online Publishing in the School of Information Technology, Charles Sturt University, Dr Kavakli joined Macquarie University in 2003. At Macquarie, Dr Kavakli established a Virtual Reality Lab for fostering graphics research in the Department of Computing. She received a number of internal grants for the development of a Virtual Hand system, a VR-based Face Recognition system, and a VR Engine. She supervised 2 Honours theses on "Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design in Virtual Reality" and "Modelling Risk and Strategies in Computer Games" in 2004, as well as 3 postdoctoral fellows on the impacts of visualization, gameplay, and virtual reality between 2003-2005. At present, Dr Kavakli has been supervising 5 PhD and 5 Honours students in these areas. Dr Kavakli brought researchers together as a multidisciplinary and international research team and established the Interactive Systems and Virtual Reality Research Group at Macquarie University in 2005. The research team currently holds an ARC Discovery Grant to develop a training simulation using VR technology, an ARC Linkage grant to develop a cognitive model for speech recognition in computer games, an ARC Linkage International Grant to develop an interactive drama engine in VR. |