CAREER: Rendering Algorithms for Tactile and Haptic Display of Multidimensional Data

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This career plan focuses on the broad challenges of designing every-citizen interfaces (ECIs) to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) and fully integrating individuals with disabilities into the education and employment mainstream. These are complementing challenges as full access to the NII is becoming integral to not only education and employment, but also leisure time pursuits. Access is of particular concern to individuals with physical, sensory, and other disabilities who often find current interfaces difficult or impossible to use. This career plan consists of a tightly coordinated set of research, education, and mentoring activities designed to address the NII interface and educational needs of individuals with disabilities.Within the broad objectives, the specific research activities of this plan focus on the development of rendering algorithms that will allow individuals with visual impairments access to multidimensional data through haptic and tactile means. Information that is multidimensional, such as complex mathematical expressions or recorded sensor data, is generally displayed in an inaccessible visual form. While tactile and haptic hardware technology continues to advance and can be brought to bear on this problem, relatively little research has been applied to the development of rendering algorithms for the effective display of information. This research will address the following fundamental issues: Optimal data decomposition for low-relief tactile and dynamic haptic display - Methods for extracting data features, including edges, contours, region boundaries, and textures that faithfully represent the underlying data will be developed. Optimal feature and multiresolution display - Display methods that are optimized for the low tactile and kinesthetic bandwidth will be developed. These methods will present data features in a form that can be comprehended tactilely and haptically. Moreover, these display methods will allow for a multiresolution display in which detail level can be easily controlled.The tactile and haptic rendering research will also develop multimodal methods and formalize this area of research borrowing from the more developed fields of sonification and general visualization.The research objectives are closely integrated with a complementing set of education and mentoring objectives, including the development of related courses and the implementation of mentoring activities for students from underrepresented groups in the high school through graduate school levels. The specific educational and mentoring objectives include: Course Development - Courses will be developed that give students a theoretical foundation in areas critical to ECI design and will also introduce them to a wide array of problems, including disability related issues. Students will also work with community organizations to solve real-world problems and learn in a problem-based setting. Mentoring activities - Mentoring activities include an Internet based mentoring program for high school students with disabilities, summer internships and research opportunities, and advisement of a campus disability issues focused student organization.The education and mentoring activities will be conducted in conjunction with the research activities, for instance through the use of research projects as teaching examples in courses and the inclusion of interns in research teams. Moreover, results from the research efforts will form new paradigm teaching tools that can be integrated into the curriculum. Through these coordinated efforts, the body of knowledge on ECI design will be advanced as will the opportunities available to individuals with disabilities.