A Haptic-based Interface and Sculpting System for Virtual Environments

这是一个为期三年的连续奖励的第一年资助。 计算机集成工程设计包括各种复杂和具有挑战性的过程，从概念设计，几何建模，评估，原型设计，制造，装配到生产。 为了改善CAD/CAM流程，以及彻底改变人机交互技术，PI将开发一个交互式和有形的虚拟环境，通过动态建模和实时触觉造型的新颖集成来推进当前的最先进技术。 为了这些目的，他们将专注于关键的基本问题，这些问题与软件环境中的几何图元和虚拟材料物理特性的多个异构表示的快速和准确同步有关，包括最佳算法及其时间/空间分析，以及稳定性，鲁棒性和误差范围等数值特性。 他们将通过开发新的触觉造型工具包和评估工具包的实用性和人为因素，系统地研究触觉交互技术对下一代设计技术的影响。 最后，他们将研究触觉原理与成熟的几何设计技术的有效整合，并开发一个具有触觉界面和实时触觉造型功能的实验虚拟环境。 PI将向美国设计业和计算机企业传播新的触觉技术及其软件。 为了进一步扩大新的触觉技术在工程，科学和医学中的可及性，PI将（通过广泛的合作）做出额外的努力，将其原型软件系统推广到其他与触觉相关的应用，如手术模拟和培训，以及大型科学数据集的触觉可视化。

This is the first year funding of a three-year continuing award. Computer-integrated engineering design consists of a variety of complex and challenging processes, ranging from conceptual design, geometric modeling, evaluation, prototyping, manufacturing, assembly, to production. To ameliorate CAD/CAM processes, as well as to revolutionize human-computer interaction technology, the PIs will develop an interactive and tangible virtual environment to advance the current state-of-the-art through the novel integration of dynamic modeling and real-time haptic sculpting. To these ends, they will focus on critical fundamental issues relating to the rapid and accurate synchronization of multiple heterogeneous representations of geometric primitives and physical properties of virtual material in a software environment, including optimal algorithms and their time/space analysis, and numerical characteristics such as stability, robustness, and error bounds. They will investigate haptic interaction techniques towards the next-generation design technology in a systematic way through the development of novel haptic sculpting toolkits and the evaluation of both toolkit utilities and human factors. Finally, they will investigate the effective integration of haptic principles with mature geometric design techniques and develop an experimental virtual environment with haptic interface and real-time haptic sculpting capabilities. The PIs will disseminate the novel haptic technology and its software to the U.S. design industry and computer enterprises. To further broaden the accessibility of the new haptic technology in engineering, sciences, and medicine, the PIs will make extra efforts (through extensive collaborations) towards generalizing their prototype software system to other haptics-relevant applications such as surgical simulation and training, and haptic visualization of large scientific data sets, as time allows.