EAGER: Exploring Volumetric Modeling and Design Theory for Virtual Environments

工程设计的本质是快速、有效和创造性地向最优解转变，这可以通过跨越多个维度的众多设计参数的迭代修改来完成。为了改善整个计算机辅助工程流程，并通过it支持的工具增强工程师的创造力，这个小规模的CreativeIT项目的长期雄心勃勃的目标是开发一个增强创造力的虚拟原型环境，通过对现实世界对象的基于物理的建模和力的触觉雕刻，极大地促进人机交互。PI的战略目标是为实体建模、设计、分析和相关应用开发一个触觉支持的平台，其中包括一套新的体积模型，用于表示多维数据集，以及用于操纵和管理这些表示的基于触觉的物理交互。知识优势：PI计划采用一种独特的集成方法，旨在将不同的研究重点纳入单个IT系统，这些研究重点涵盖了用于新颖数据表示的体积、物理和材料建模；基于几何和物理的交互和分析算法；以及各种应用的软件工具。通过一系列理论驱动的研究活动，从长远来看，这项计划的更广泛影响将是基础和深远的，它将在更广泛的实际应用中增强IT工具，并通过触觉交互扩大人类对计算机的可访问性。该计划承诺提供一种新的方法来表示、操作和交互通常在下游应用中使用的体积数据集，如数字工程、用于合成/分析的虚拟雕刻、外科培训等。

The essence of engineering design is rapid, effective, and creative change towards optimal solutions, which can be accomplished through the iterative modification of numerous design parameters spanning across multi-dimensions. To ameliorate the entire computer-aided engineering processes and enhance engineers' creativity through IT-supported tools, the long-term ambitious goal of this small-scale, CreativeIT project is to develop a creativity-enhancing virtual prototype environment that can greatly facilitate human-computer interaction through physics-based modeling of real-world objects and force-enabled haptic sculpting. The PI's strategy aims to develop a haptics-enabled platform for solid modeling, design, analysis, and relevant applications, which includes a suite of new, volumetric models for representing multi-dimensional datasets as well as haptics-based physical interactions for manipulating and managing such representations.Intellectual Merits: The PI plans to take a unique and integrated approach that aims to incorporate within a single IT system disparate research thrusts that span volumetric, physical, and material modeling for novel data representation; geometric and physics-based algorithms for interaction and analysis; and software tools for various applications. Through a suite of theory-driven research activities, the Broader Impact of this initiative in the long run will be both fundamental and profound to the enhancement of IT tools in a wider spectrum of real applications as well as the broadening of computer accessibility by human beings via haptic interaction. This initiative promises to deliver a new approach for representing, manipulating, and interacting with volumetric datasets in common use in such downstream applications as digital engineering, virtual sculpting for synthesis/analysis, surgical training, and many more.