PhD Proposal Presentation - Ulrich Eck

[Elyse Perin]

Dear Colleagues

 

You are invited to attend PhD Proposal Presentation by Ulrich Eck

 

Date: Thursday, 14^th Feb 2013

 

Time: 12pm

 

Location: D1-05, Mawson Lakes

 

Ulrich Eck, PhD Candidate
Magic Vision Lab
Supervisor: Dr Christian Sandor
Co-Supervisor: Dr Hamid Laga

 

 

~A light lunch will be provided~

 

Title:                                                                   Visuo-Haptic Augmented Reality Runtime and Authoring Environment for Medical Training

 

 

Abstract:

During the last decade, Visuo-Haptic Augmented Reality (VHAR) systems have emerged that enable users to see and touch digital information that is embedded in the real world. They pose unique problems to developers, including the need for precise augmentations, accurate colocation of haptic devices, and efficient processing of multiple, realtime sensor inputs concurrently to achieve low latency. We think that this complexity is one of the main reasons, why VHAR technology has only been used in few user interface research projects.

 

The proposed project's main objective is to pioneer the development of a widely applicable VHAR runtime and authoring environment, which meets the requirements of realtime, low latency operation with precise co-location, haptic interaction with deformable bodies, and realistic rendering, while reducing the the overall complexity for developers. A further objective is, to evaluate the benefits of VHAR user interfaces with a focus on medical training applications, so that creators of future medical simulators or other haptic enabled applications recognize the potential of VHAR.

 

The runtime environment will leverage the achievements of previous work, integrate best-of-breed algorithms, and connect them with a self-optimizing dataflow kernel, which dynamically distributes workload on available processing units (multi-core CPUs, GPUs). The authoring environment will streamline the creation of VHAR applications and allows quick iterations to speed up development and to support participatory design sessions. In collaboration with TU Munich and the Germans Space Agency DLR, I will build and evaluate two medical training application prototypes with VHAR user interfaces.

 

The impact of the generic runtime and authoring environment on VHAR research is expected to be similar to early work on User Interface (UI) development systems [Myers, 1989]. They enabled the average programmer to create sophisticated UIs by providing clean application programming interfaces and design patterns, which simplify development by hiding the complexity of UI systems. The dataflow-based approach for VHAR is similar to event-based UI programs, as it will solve the fundamental problem of connecting input, output, and processing nodes efficiently in a developer friendly way. The self-optimizing dataflow kernel will also be useful to improve performance and simplify development of other stream-based applications in the areas of multimedia, visualization, and simulation. Furthermore, the evaluation of VHAR user interfaces will provide useful insights to researchers and product designers.