Broad Area Colloquium For AI-Geometry-Graphics-Robotics-Vision


Tangible Simulation: Computational models for visual, auditory, and haptic interaction

Dinesh Pai
Department of Computer Science
University British Columbia

Monday, Apr 16, 2001, 4:15PM
TCSEQ 201
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/

Abstract

To build virtual environments that are realistic, useful, and enjoyable we must solve two important problems. First, how can we create computational models that exhibit realistic behaviors when we interact with them --- behaviors we can experience naturally with our eyes, ears, and hands? Second, how can we make it easy to build such multi-modal models of existing objects, quickly and accurately? I will describe our work towards solving these problems. Contact interaction is essential to create the illusion of tangibility. I will describe new techniques for physical simulation of contact at interactive rates, with visual deformation, contact sound synthesis, and haptic force feedback. To construct comprehensive multi-modal models we have developed the UBC Active Measurement Facility (ACME), a highly programmable robotic system with a large number of sensors and actuators. ACME provides one-stop shopping for scanning ``reality-based'' models of shape, appearance, deformation, sound, and contact texture.

About the Speaker

Dinesh K. Pai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, a member of the Institute of Applied Mathematics, and a fellow of the BC Advanced Systems Institute. He's the Director of the UBC Active Measurement Facility. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. His research interests span the areas of robotics, graphics, modeling, and simulation. One current research focus is ``Reality-based'' modeling. Another focus is fast simulation with integrated sound, haptics, and graphics, especially simulation of contact. See http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~pai for more information.


Contact: bac-coordinators@cs.stanford.edu

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