Infrastructure for collaborative hapto-visual environments

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This proposal is a joint application of the MCRLab (Multimedia Communications Research Laboratory) the VIVA Research laboratory and the DISCOVER Lab (Distributed & Collaborative Virtual Environments Research Laboratory) of the University of Ottawa. It aims at enhancing and establishing an infrastructure of research for haptic audio-visual environments. Content creation for advanced simulations using hapto-audio-visual environments (HAVE) is a major challenge. Originally, HAVE have been purely hand-crafted with mathematical and graphical tools but recently data driven approaches have gained importance. The capture of highly detailed visual appearance models of everyday objects and subjects from the real world has developed into a major research area in computer graphics. The DISCOVER laboratory focuses on combining various research areas such as model acquisition, model display and manipulation and communication of these models in advanced applications. In order to strengthen the acquisition capabilities of DISCOVER, a facility to capture dynamic models of humans, objects and events is urgently needed. The facility would allow the capture of human dynamic motion data but also the acquisition of appearance models of humans including face, hand, and body motion, as well as, skin deformation. Beside human motion capture, the facility would also be suitable to model highly dynamic events, e.g., a dynamic model of a ball as it bounces, of water spray as an object enters it and even the rupture of a balloon. These research avenues are linked with applications in human motion analysis in sports and medicine, 3D computer animation, model acquisition for computer games, scientific applications and educational exhibits. The facility will also be used to capture image based representations of large complex real-world environments. New haptic devices and motion platforms are needed for advanced applications in medical training, health-oriented simulations and emergency training simulations.