Virtual reality and haptics for nanorobotics

Virtual reality (VR) is a powerful technology for solving today's real-world problems. It provides a way for people to visualize, manipulate, and interact with simulated environments through the use of computers and extremely complex data. This paper describes some of the emerging applications of VR recently completed or currently underway in the field of nanotechnology with emphasis on existing experimental systems.     

Virtual reality for assembly methods prototyping: a review

Assembly planning and evaluation is an important component of the product design process in which details about how parts of a new product will be put together are formalized. A well designed assembly process should take into account various factors such as optimum assembly time and sequence, tooling and fixture requirements, ergonomics, operator safety, and accessibility, among others. Existing computer-based tools to support virtual assembly either concentrate solely on representation of the geometry of parts and fixtures and evaluation of clearances and tolerances or use simulated human mannequins to approximate human interaction in the assembly process. Virtual reality technology has the potential to support integration of natural human motions into the computer aided assembly planning environment (Ritchie et al. in Proc I MECH E Part B J Eng 213(5):461–474, 1999). This would allow evaluations of an assembler’s ability to manipulate and assemble parts and result in reduced time and cost for product design. This paper provides a review of the research in virtual assembly and categorizes the different approaches. Finally, critical requirements and directions for future research are presented.     

Augmented reality for dental implant surgery: enhanced ICP

Augmented reality surgery has not been successfully implemented in dental implant surgery due to the negative impact of an incorrect implant placement. This research aimed to improve the convergence between computed tomography derived teeth model and real-time stereo view of patient’s teeth to provide high registration accuracy. Enhanced iterative closest point algorithm is proposed to reduce the error caused due to matching wrong points. Weighting mechanism and median value are used to reduce alignment error caused due to matching wrong points. In addition, random sample consensus (RANSAC) algorithm is used to detect and remove the outlier. Furthermore, the current solution for dental implants did not provide the position and orientation of the surgical tool, and without this information, there is a risk of damaging adjacent structure, dental nerves, and root canals. Optical tracking device is used in the proposed solution to address this information and ensure that nerve does not get damaged during the dental implant placement surgery. While the state-of-the-art solution provided 0.44 mm registration accuracy, the proposed solution was improving it by providing 0.33 mm registration accuracy. Additionally, the proposed system can produce good results despite not having a good initialization. The processing time improved to 14 fps in comparison to the 9-fps given by state-of-the-art solution. The proposed system improved the accuracy of convergence and the processing time compared to the globally optimal-ICP algorithm. We also employed RANSAC algorithm to detect and remove the outlier on the estimation and reduce the influence of extreme points.

     

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.     

Virtual Visual Servoing: a framework for real-time augmented reality

This paper presents a framework to achieve real‐time augmented reality applications. We propose a framework based on the visual servoing approach well known in robotics. We consider pose or viewpoint computation as a similar problem to visual servoing. It allows one to take advantage of all the research that has been carried out in this domain in the past. The proposed method features simplicity, accuracy, efficiency, and scalability wrt. to the camera model as well as wrt. the features extracted from the image. We illustrate the efficiency of our approach on augmented reality applications with various real image sequences.     

Virtual reality for collaborative e-learning

In the past, the term e-learning referred to any method of learning that used electronic delivery methods. With the advent of the Internet however, e-learning has evolved and the term is now most commonly used to refer to online courses. A multitude of systems are now available to manage and deliver learning content online. While these have proved popular, they are often single-user learning environments which provide little in the way of interaction or stimulation for the student. As the concept of lifelong learning now becomes a reality and thus more and more people are partaking in online courses, researchers are constantly exploring innovative techniques to motivate online students and enhance the e-learning experience. This article presents our research in this area and the resulting development of CLEV-R, a Collaborative Learning Environment with Virtual Reality. This web-based system uses Virtual Reality (VR) and multimedia and provides communication tools to support collaboration among students. In this article, we describe the features of CLEV-R, its adaptation for mobile devices and present the findings from an initial evaluation.     

Virtual reality authoring for schools

The paper describes a method for programming behaviours of objects in virtual worlds. It is designed to be easy to use and to shield users from complex coding and syntax errors. It has been tested in a number of projects within schools in Brazil.     

Virtual reality as a communication process

In this work, we consider immersive Virtual Reality (VR) as a communication process between humans, mediated by computer systems, which uses interaction, visualization, and other sensory stimuli to convey information. From this viewpoint, it is relevant to understand how VR can solve a given communication problem, what is therefore the expressive power of VR system, i.e., its ability in establishing the communication, what are the guidelines to design an effective system, and what are the more relevant models of VR applications. Firstly, we try to clarify the notion of reality in Virtual Reality systems and conclude that reality is not an intrinsic characteristic of VR, rather the result of a conventional way of coding information. The purpose of coding is to lead the observer to the conclusion that the VR set is what is called in italian as verisimile (from Latin veri similis), i.e., ??similar-to-the-real-thing??. So the creation of an effective VR application is an artifice or an illusion. But in order to avoid an over-reliance on the creativity of the VR designer, we intend to identify a solid ground on which different kinds of VR solutions can be considered in terms of their ability to solve the desired communication objective. To this aim, we will rely on methods derived from rhetoric to semiotics.     

Enhancing personal communication with spatial haptics: Two scenario-based experiments on gestural interaction

Haptic gestures and sensations through the sense of touch are currently unavailable in remote communication. There are two main reasons for this: good quality haptic technology has not been widely available and knowledge on the use of this technology is limited. To address these challenges, we studied how users would like to, and managed to create spatial haptic information by gesturing. Two separate scenario-based experiments were carried out: an observation study without technological limitations, and a study on gesturing with a functional prototype with haptic actuators. The first study found three different use strategies for the device. The most common gestures were shaking, smoothing and tapping. Multimodality was requested to create the context for the communication and to aid the interpretation of haptic stimuli. The second study showed that users were able to utilize spatiality in haptic messages (e.g., forward–backward gesture for agreement). However, challenges remain in presenting more complex information via remote haptic communication. The results give guidance for communication activities that are usable in spatial haptic communication, and how to make it possible to enable this form of communication in reality.     

Virtual reality: A distributed perspective

This paper considers the implications of Distributed Virtual Reality in terms of user interaction and networking. It is argued that the allocation strategy of data in such a system is one of the fundamental problems faced by designers of Distributed Virtual Reality applications. The need to use experience and techniques drawn from distributed databases is highlighted.     

Virtual reality for ambulance simulation environment

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Simulations are beneficial in evaluating clinicians’ empirical competencies through practical skills, prioritizing, and decision-making as part of patient...     

Virtual Reality： A State-of-the-Art Survey

This paper presents a survey on virtual reality systems and provides an in-depth understanding toward the notion of immersion, according to the semantic meanings of the terms ``virtual' and ``reality'. The paper analyses the structure and functions of a virtual reality system and takes the three dimensional display as the immersive medium to identify the key issues for construction of virtual environments. The paper also reviews the development of virtual reality technology and introduces new image processing techniques into the design of virtual reality systems and virtual environments.     

Virtual reality for cultural landscape visualization

Although land managers and policy-makers generally have a good experience of what result can be expected from their decisions, they are often faced with difficulty when trying to communicate the visual impact of a management option to stakeholders, particularly when the landscape exhibits a high cultural value. Three-dimensional visualization of the landscape is often used for communicating with the stakeholders. A challenge in participatory methods for integrated assessment and policy planning is to view future changes in land use, according to scenarios. A 3-D landscape visualization component, SLE (“Seamless Landscape Explorer”), has been developed, which is launched after a scenario simulation to allow for exploration of landscape changes. Pressures causing such changes are translated into changes in the spatial configuration of the landscape. The different types of land-use are visualized thanks to a library of detailed textures, and vegetation can be added. This has been applied to a study of four scenarios in the French Mediterranean region, which were set up as part of a participatory process for discussing the planning of the regional peri-urban and agricultural policy, in an area dominated by the typical culturally sensitive Mediterranean matorral, (“garrigue” shrubland) surrounding the Pic Saint-Loup mountain. Examples of visualization are shown and discussed here.     

Low-delay video control in a personal area network for augmented reality

A personal area network (PAN) is a feature of an augmented reality system, transmitting modified video for real-time display. Low-delay communication of encoded video over a Bluetooth wireless PAN is achieved in favourable channel conditions by a combination of dynamic packetisation of video slices together with centralised and predictive rate control. The result is minimised packet delay (below 0.05 s) and high-quality 40 dB video, with packet loss limited to 4 from radio frequency noise. Where channel conditions result in error bursts, dynamic rate change is introduced to reduce the need for packet retransmission and improve power efficiency.     

Virtual reality with fMRI: a breakthrough cognitive treatment tool

The impact of virtual reality (VR) has been felt in a wide range of fields over the past 10 years. VR has been shown to be an effective treatment for anxiety, phobia, pain, posttraumatic stress disorder, stress inoculation training, and drug and alcohol addiction. The emerging application of VR in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is helping to improve upon current VR systems, and in the future will aid in creating more effective treatments for patients. With the advent of fMRI-safe VR goggles, brain activity can be studied in real time as a patient undergoes a VR treatment. The use of brain imaging during a VR session allows for the study of the brain itself as a patient interacts in a real-world environment. Studies are showing that by using VR in combination with fMRI, a new emergence of data about previously-elusive functions of the brain can be expected.     

Virtual and augmented reality 2020

With roots going back to Ivan Sutherland's research in the 1960s, virtual reality (VR) reached a plateau in the early 1990s when the promise was demonstrable in universities and research laboratories. Although we all knew we had a long way to go, hype overtook the field, leading to impossible expectations. Fortunately, a few years later the Internet became the latest hot topic, leaving VR researchers free to go back to work. Almost a decade later, VR has gone from “almost there” to “barely there”. That's a big step! Perhaps by 2020 we will be “pretty well there”! In this article, I venture a few remarks about progress over the next two decades. However, the safest prediction is that unanticipated science and technology advances will make this forecast seem overly conservative     

Augmented reality using personal projection and retroreflection

The support of realistic and flexible training simulations for military, law enforcement, emergency response, and other domains has been an important motivator for the development of augmented reality technology. An important vision for achieving this goal has been the creation of a versatile “stage” for physical, emotional, and cognitive training that combines virtual characters and environments with real world elements, such as furniture and props. This paper presents REFLCT, a mixed reality projection framework that couples a near-axis personal projector design with tracking and novel retroreflective props and surfaces. REFLCT provides multiple users with personalized, perspective-correct imagery that is uniquely composited for each user directly into and onto a surrounding environment, without any optics positioned in front of the user’s eyes or face. These characteristics facilitate team training experiences which allow users to easily interact with their teammates while wearing their standard issue gear. REFLCT can present virtual humans who can make deictic gestures and establish eye contact without the geometric ambiguity of a typical projection display. It can also display perspective-correct scenes that require a realistic approach for detecting and communicating potential threats between multiple users in disparate locations. In addition to training applications, this display system appears to be well matched with other user interface and application domains, such as asymmetric collaborative workspaces and personal information guides.