Acquisition of a Visroom for Cognitive Studies, Visualization, and Education

在国家科学基金会重大研究促进奖的支持下，杜克大学普拉特工程学院将获得一个完全封闭的、六面的、3mx3mx2.7m的反投影虚拟现实环境。访问室将位于跨学科工程、医学和应用科学中心(CIEMAS)中庭的一个特殊建造的30英尺立方体中。客室将是美国东南部唯一的此类设施，也是美国第四个这样的系统。随着科学家收集的数据集的大小和复杂性增加，对支持数据分析和科学交流的更强大工具的需求也越来越大。过去证明在这方面最有用的工具是那些利用人类感知系统中内置的非凡信息处理能力的工具，特别是视觉和听力。因此，蛋白质组学、基因组学、地震学、神经科学和天体物理学等许多最具创新性的研究领域的研究人员严重依赖计算密集型可视化工具来探索他们的数据和测试模型。VisRoom等技术不仅被用来探索通过其他方式收集的数据，而且本身也被用作实验工具，用于研究人类感知和运动控制的许多方面，这些方面仍然知之甚少。项目负责人预计，为来自多个学科的科学家提供最先进的可视化技术，将激励他们找到创造性和富有成效的方法，将新工具整合到各自的研究计划中。目前计划在这个展览室进行的项目包括认知神经科学研究、3D结构探索和教育。具体地说，视觉感知研究将利用VisRoom精确控制照明、物体反射率和场景几何图形的能力来评估系统操作如何改变观察者对颜色的感知。运动研究将在完成任务的过程中动态扭曲视野，以深入了解注意力、运动规划和运动执行的作用。计算机科学家和生物化学家将联合使用VisRoom在两种蛋白质之间“爬行”，直接检查相互作用区。开发心脏生理模型的生物医学工程师将使用VisRoom进入心壁，并研究控制心脏功能的不同生理过程之间的关系。最后，中学生将使用VisRoom作为发育生物学学习的辅助工具。例如，他们将有机会与虚拟的发育中的鸡胚胎互动，并观察48小时后动脉系统的单管如何以3D形式弯曲形成心脏的四个腔。除了为科学家和教育工作者提供一个强大的新可视化工具外，项目负责人还预计VisRoom将充当一个“水坑”，支持往往开辟科学研究新领域的那种跨学科互动。

With support from a National Science Foundation Major Research Insturmentation Award, Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering will acquire a fully enclosed, six-sided, 3m x 3m x 2.7m, back projected virtual reality environment. The VisRoom will be located in a specially constructed 30 foot cube in the atrium of the Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Science (CIEMAS). The VisRoom will be the only facility of its kind in the Southeast and the fourth such system in the United States. As the datasets scientists collect increase in size and complexity, so increases the need for ever more powerful tools to support data analysis and scientific communication. The tools that in the past have proved most useful in this regard have been those that take advantage of the remarkable information-processing ability built into human perceptual systems, particularly vision and audition. Thus, investigators in many of the most innovative fields of research, e.g., proteomics, genomics, seismology, neuroscience and astrophysics, rely heavily on computationally-intensive visualization tools to explore their data and test models. Technologies such as the VisRoom are used not only to explore data collected through other means, but also as experimental tools in and of themselves for investigating the many aspects of human perception and motor control that remain poorly understood. The project directors anticipate that providing scientists from many disciplines with access to state-of-the-art visualization technologies will inspire them to find creative and productive ways of incorporating the new tools into their respective research programs.Projects curently planned for this VisRoom include research in cognitive neuroscience, exploration of 3D structures, and education. Specifically, visual perception studies will take advantage of the VisRoom's ability to precisely control illumination, object reflectances, and scene geometry to assess how systematic manipulations chage the observers' perceptions of color. Movement studies will dynamically distort the visual field during reaching tasks to gain insight into the role of attention, movement planning, and movement execution. Computer scientists and biochemists will jointly use the VisRoom to 'crawl' between two proteins to inspect the interaction areas directly. Biomedical engineers who develop physiological models of the heart will use the VisRoom to 'enter' the heart wall and investigate the relationships among the different physiological processes that govern cardiac function. Finally, middle school students will use the VisRoom as an aid in the study of developmental biology. For example, they will have the opportunity to interact with a virtual developing chicken embryo and observe how, at 48 hours, the single tube of the artery system curves in 3D to form the four chambers of the heart. In addition to providing scientists and educators with a with a powerful new visualization tool, the project directors anticipate that the VisRoom will act as a "watering hole," supporting the kind of cross-disciplinary interaction that often opens up new areas of scientific research.