Human Interface Technology Lab (HITLab)

1. The mission of the HITLab
2. People @ HITLab
3. Research @ HITLab
4. Virtual Worlds Consortium
5. Contacts @ HITLab
6. Hardcopies available @ Dao's office
7. My comments

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People @ HITLab

Professor

• Thomas Furness

Director of Information Services

• Toni Emerson (1st so called Cybrarian)

Principal Investigators (teaching & research)

• Eric Seibel (Virtual Retinal Display)
• Suzanne Weghorst (wearables)
• Max Wells (hardware, human factors)
• Erik Viirre (VR effects)
• Hunter Hoffman (therapeutic VR)
• ...

Program Manager (research)

• Bruce Campbell
• ...

Research Assistant (approx. N=25)

• Undergraduate (10%)
• Masters (50%)
• PhD (40%)

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Research @ HITLab (N.B. essentially the demos I've seen)

Virtual Retinal Display (Erik Seibel)

Virtual Retinal Display" (VRD) scans intensity modulated laser light pixels directly onto retina. Each pixel is modulated in short pulses of 30ns to 40ns. The input light is a combined beam from three different wavelengths of laser light which produces a color gamut exceeding that of a conventional CRT. The area covered by the laser spot on the back of the retina for the duration of a single pixel is called a 'retinel'.

LIMIT: Laboratory for Integrated Medical Interface Technology (Suzanne Weghorst)

Inside the virtual Emergency Room, doctors and other medical personnel can grab data objects (such as radiology images, simulated teleconsultant video, EKG recordings, heart rhythm strips, and vital signs data) and place them anywhere in the space. Each object can also be stabilized relative to a number of different reference points, such as the room, the virtual patient, the user's head, and the user's body. Objects can also be made visible or invisible at the user's command. The objective of all this activity is to explore the design space for medical interfaces of the future, to determine how immersive augmented space might best be utilized.

Virtual Motion Controller (Max Wells)

The HIT Lab's VMC working prototype measures body position over the working surface with an arrangement of four weight sensors. The curved working surface provides important feedback to the user about his or her physical location, and therefore body locomotion input to the device. A head-tracker worn by the user measures yaw axis motion of the head, which controls the view orientation. This combination of inputs facilitates natural and independent control of travel direction and gaze direction. Other conceptual prototypes will be capable of operating without the head tracker, working instead with panel-mounted display screens (projector screens). [experiment]

FLIGHT : Feedback-based muLti-Dimensional Interface as a General Human-Computer Technology (Tom Anderson)

FLIGHT incorporates force feedback into its interface and interaction. It uses the PHANToM· Haptic Interface to actually touch what a user sees on the screen including the 3D windowing system, the control panel, and even application specific data. FLIGHT has the ability to spatialize 3D sounds in a 3D environment. Sounds seem to originate from virtual objects in the same way that they do in real life using HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) technologies.

Virtual Playground (Bruce Campbell)

As a continuation of the Greenspace project we have designed and prototyped a new generation of a shared virtual space. Written completely in Java and using the new Java3D API it will be able to take advantage of the robustness and portability of the Java language and libraries. The design of the Virtual Playground included more than just technical considerations of how to synchronize content between host machines. We started by re-examining why people spend time in virtual communities and what they do and how they do it. From this top down approach we designed the affordances and the underlying technical requirements.

• Schwartz, P.; Campbell, B.; Tanney, S.; Yen, S.; Shen, L-S; Furness, T.A. III (submitted). Virtual Playground: Architectures for a Shared World. In proceedings of Virtual Reality Software and Technology: ACM. (you can find a copy @ Dao's office)
• Tanney, S.; Schwartz, P.; Yen, S.; Shen, L-S.; Furness, T.A. III (submitted). A Design Method for Virtual Environments Using Narrative and Pattern Languages. In proceedings of Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST): ACM. (you can find a copy @ Dao's office)

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Virtual Worlds Consortium

The VIRTUAL WORLDS CONSORTIUM is the primary mechanism through which strategic projects and partnerships are formed between the HIT Lab, industry, government and academia.

Members of the Consortium are :

Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR), Alias | wavefront, American Express Co., Armstrong Aeromedical Research Laboratory (AAMRL) , Battelle, The Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP), Boeing, Digital Equipment Corp., Division, Fluke, Ford Motor Co., Franz, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, Hughes, Insight, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Institute for Information Industry, Kopin Corporation, Microsoft, Microvision Inc., Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Museum of Flight, NBBJ, NEC Corporation, Omron Corporation, Philips, Rockwell Science Center, Inc., Samsung, SensAble Technologies, Sense8, Sharp Corporation, Stratos, Sun Microsystems, Tektronix, Telecom Italia, Texas Instruments, U.S. Navy, U.S. West Communications, Virtual Vision.

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• Bruce Campbell
• Toni Emerson and here Knowledge Base...

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