Overview from Virtual Reality, Scientific and Technical Challenges, NRC, 1995

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Overview from Virtual Reality, Scientific and
Technical Challenges, NRC, 1995

• Summarized by Geb Thomas

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Learning Objectives

• Be able to describe the current areas of research
  related to SE.
• Be able to draw a system diagram differentiation
  teleoperation and virtual environments.
• Be able to define augmented reality.
• Be able to distinguish the NRC definition of
  Presence from Ellis definition.
• Define the distinctions between a simulator and a
  virtual environment.
• Describe common characteristics of SEs.
• Define the symptoms of sopite syndrome.

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Introduction

• Includes both Virtual Environments and
  Teleoperation
• VE - Human connects to simulated world
• Telerobotics - Human connects to a real world via
  a robot sensors and actuators

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Scope of the SE Field

• Multidisciplinary
• Terminology confusion
• input and output
• interface
• High talk-to-work and excitement-to-accomplishment
  ratios

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Current Areas of Research

• Computer generation of VE
• Design of telerobots
• Improvement of human/machine interfaces
• Relevant aspects of human behavior
• Comm. systems and networks
• Computer-generated images of the real world

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Basic Concepts and Terminology

• Teleoperator system -- a human operator, a
  human-machine interface and a telerobot
• facilitate the human operators ability to sense,
  maneuver in, and manipulate the environment
• Virtual environments system -- a human operator,
  a human-machine interface and a computer

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Augmented Reality System

• Virtual and real environments are combined
• Information from real environment is directly
  sensed with see-through display, supplementary
  information from VE is overlaid on the display
• VE, Teleoperator and Augmented Reality together
  constitute Synthetic Environments

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Presence

• Telepresence, virtual presence or synthetic
  presence
• Extent to which the human operator loses his or
  her awareness of being present at the site of the
  interface and instead feels present in the
  artificial environment
• Depends on transparency of interface, amount
  and kind of interaction

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VE and Simulator Distinction

• VEs are
• Reconfigurable
• Can create unnatural environments
• Highly interactive and adaptable
• Variety of sensing modalities
• Strong sense of presence
• Simulator is tied to physical system, VE to the
  operator
• Simulator does far field, VE does near field

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Common Characteristics

• Visual and auditory displays
• Head-mounted display monitoring head position
• Control signals from head, hands, feet or speech
• Haptic interface - interfaces hand for manual
  sensing and manipulation with gloves or
  exoskeletons

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Application Domains

• Entertainment
• National Defense
• Design, Manufacturing, and Marketing
• Medicine and Health Care
• Hazardous Operations
• Education
• Information Visualization
• Telecommunication and Teletravel

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Some Psych. Considerations

• Most human behavior topics are relevant
• Human performance
• Sensorimotor resolution
• Perceptual illusions
• Information transfer rates
• Manual tracking

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Sopite syndrome (simulator sickness)

• Symptoms
• chronic fatigue,
• lethargy
• drowsiness
• nausea
• Causes --
• Temperature
• Field of view
• Visual/kinesthetic misalignment
• Interaction effects

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Current State of Technology

• Visual channel
• Auditory channel
• Position tracking and mapping
• Haptic channel
• Motion interfaces
• Other interfaces

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Visual channel

• Poor resolution
• Limited field of view
• Excessive weight
• Poor fit
• May cause sopite syndrome
• 10K-1M
• Stereo glasses, booms

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Auditory Channel

• Effective, inexpensive and ergonomically
  reasonable
• Limited spatial resolution
• Loud speakers are sensitive to head position
• Record and playback technologies must store huge
  quantities of information
• Auditory scene analysis requires central
  processing

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Position Tracking and Mapping

• Position tracking
• Real-time measurement of pose
• Position mapping
• Dense set of 3D positions on a surface
• Determine body dimensions
• Facial expressions
• map real environments

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Position tracking

• Mechanical linkages
• Magnetic sensors
• optical sensors
• acoustic sensors

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Haptic channel

• Complex combination of sensory functions and
  manipulative functions and electromechanical
  systems
• Lack of recognized social need
• Body-based gloves and exoskeletons
• Ground-based devices (joysticks, robots)
• Tool-handle systems
• Skin, tactile displays

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Motion interfaces

• Vestibular system,
• Motor system,
• Visual and auditory systems,
• Proprioceptive/kinesthetic systems
• Tactile systems
• Inertial Displays -- body moves
• Noninertial displays -- body remains stationary
• Treadmills, stair climbers, stationary bikes

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Telerobotics

• Design and performance of robots
• micromechanical systems
• Communication time delays
• 30 ms between Washington and LA
• 1 s between Earth and Moon
• Supervisory control and predictive displays
• Demands of real time input/output
• distributed telerobotics

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Networks

• Shared virtual environments
• SIMNET
• 300 soldiers in tank and aircraft simulators
  interacting
• 10baseT standard
• 100baseT optional at CoE
• 1.25 Gbit/s reasonable, with effort

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Recommendations

• Promising application areas
• Design, manufacturing and marketing
• Medicine and health care
• Hazardous operations
• Training
• Two special projects
• Modeling the human body
• Knowledge transfer

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Learning Objectives

• Be able to describe the current areas of research
  related to SE.
• Be able to draw a system diagram differentiating
  teleoperation and virtual environments.
• Be able to define augmented reality.
• Be able to distinguish the NRC definition of
  Presence from Ellis definition.
• Be able to define the distinctions between a
  simulator and a virtual environment.
• Be able to describe common characteristics of
  SEs.
• Be able to define the symptoms of sopite syndrome.

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