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Sculpting Interface Prototype
uw_dwarf writes "Now you can play with Play-Doh and your computer at the same time. Folks at the State University of New York at Buffalo have demonstrated another tactile interface to the computer: a glove with a sensor to determine pressure and direction in 3-space as the user works with a nice malleable substance. I'm torn between 'cool!' and 'scary!'"
The technology utilizes a ModelGlove developed by the researchers to record the force exerted by hand when depressing and shaping a block of clay. This force-feedback information, as well as information on hand position and speed of fingertip motion, is instantaneously communicated to a personal computer where a virtual block of clay -- possessing characteristics mimicking the physical properties of the clay -- is shaped precisely to the contouring of the actual clay.
;-)
The next generation of the ModelGlove will have sensors on all fingers and on the palm of the hand to give users full finger control of virtual clay.
"Touch is the next frontier in the evolution of virtual reality," Kesavadas says. "Most virtual-reality technologies to this point have focused on 3D visualization, but the sense of touch may be the most powerful way to make virtual reality more real."
"I'm torn between hot and sexy", said Hugh Heffner when asked about this interactive research project being worked on at the Playboy Research Labs
Stocks soar in the interactive porn industry.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
"... have demonstrated another tactile interface to the computer: a glove with a sensor to determine pressure and direction in 3-space as the user works with a nice malleable substance."
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Oh. dear. God.
...I'll point out that they prefer to be called just plain "University at Buffalo" now, none of that low class SUNY stuff (even though they still are part of the SUNY system).
And any pr0n joke I make is already redundant. Oh well, if there was any doubt as to how the geek mind worked...
Damn! Stole my idea.
...or for fondling something/someone.
Just curious.
. ,
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
...the sex toys with this technology? Watch out for the new USB Logitech Sex-u-lator 2005!
Boy oh boy.
I remember getting an invite over to V.P.L. (Virtual Propulsion Laboratories) back when I had a friend who was working at nearby Oracle.
The demo: they had a virtual reality glove, something which you put your hand in and moved in free space to manipulate objects in virtual reality. Yeah, yeah, I know SUNYAB has made some incremental changes and added some haptic feedback, but please, VPL had started this in the pre-boom days of Silicon Valley back in the early 1990's.
"The Power Glove has to be one of the most innovative and least useful of all peripherals. R.O.B. may be more pointless from a gaming perspective, but there wasn't as much to R.O.B.
The Power Glove along with the sensors that were to be placed around your TV supposedly allowed you to control the game through virtual reality."
ooohhhh, digital boobies.
Imagine the advances in the field of play-dohnamics! I know of several thought experiments in this field that can be now tested experimentally. There must be quite a buzz in the play doh scientific community. One noted scientist had this to say, "Gah, gah, goo, goo!" Unfortunately, he had to run of for a game of peekaboo.
I barely knew it was a word. Now I find out it's a field.
Certain hand/arm disformaties or Nuerological Degeneration diseases can have their affect on the use a of a PC nullified with proper application of this tool (as opposed to attention/finger dexterity demanding keyboards and mice).
Unfortunately, I doubt the funding is out there to adopt this technology to disabled persons uses, much less actually get it to them :-\ .
UNC had done some work sometime back on using Haptic Models for helping paintings --
dAb: Interactive Haptic Painting with 3D Virtual Brushes.
This project reminds me of that, extended to 3D with a few more features and capabilities thrown in.
doesn't help us folks who have no talent, maybe if they hooked up CAD to a nice playdoh/clay sculptor :)
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
You're doing just fine with two!
If they were in a virtual world... Yes.
Tactile feedback + interactive porn = end of mankind
The glove doesn't bother me, but the rubber spleen in the article freaks the hell out of me.
yea but suppose you cant be bothered to reproduce, triangle by triangle, a 3D structure on-screen with your mouse... just rub it all over with your gloved fingers and it's done.
Imagine once these become readily available . . .
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
why not both?
I could do a lot with that. Maybe I might be able to pay for one eventually, too.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
"...virtual block of clay -- possessing characteristics mimicking the physical properties of the clay -- is shaped precisely to the contouring of the actual clay."
The actual clay... meaning you still have to have clay? That's all well and good, but the biggest problem to working with clay and getting the shape onto the computer is getting clay all over your $K's worth of interface devices. I'd like to see the force feedback go into the glove, so I can just "model" virtual clay, sans real clay.
stuff |
There is actually a very good medical application to this. Currently the only way to detect breast cancer is through self exam and follow up radiology. If this can do subsurface mapping as shown in the article, then it should be able to detect lumps beneath the surface of the skin. No longer will you have have try to remember whether the breasts felt exactly like that before or not. With this technology just the feel alone will tell you that it is cancer.
Whether it works on not, I willing to help test.
The comment has already been made. Let's move it along people. Nothing to see here.
It seems some of you are confused as to what this is. From what I see, it using pressure sensors, and position sensors, combines them, and produces a 3D image (similar to one in a CAD program). This image can then be used later on, either to look at the object with out it being there, or to have as a design. This is not in any way the other way around. Virtual objects do not put FORCE on the GLOVE. You will not "feel" any thing from it. That would not work.
Lets look at this from a physics standpoint. It is a glove with wires coming out. There are no air bags to fill, no rockets to fire, and nothing to push your hand with. If you look at the picture you can see that. From this, we can assume the glove can not put force on your hand to move it. So no, VR sextoys, or objects won't really come from this.
What will come from this is faster design. A sculptor who is very good at making models in clay, may very well be horrible with CAD. They can model in real clay, using this glove, and it will make a CAD of the actual design he made. They can now mass produce exactly what he made. This basically flips the way they make cars around. From what I've seen, they model it, then make a clay mockup.
I've got an idea for some surfaces that might need mapping, for the health of my girlfriend of course.
Yes! Now you too can have your very own Darth Vader glove, complete with Force Strangle.
Moderation Insight
"I love the power glove. It's so bad." - Lucas
I could see how this could be used to perform some "detective" work elsewhere - connect via RF instead of serial, and now you have a surface checker that is not limited to 7ft from the PC (this assumes, of course, that it is not really a glove on your hand either). But could it be modified to enter areas that are too dangerous for humans to enter? Mount it on a small roving robot, and maybe it could inspect those pesky tiles on the space shuttle??
I for one welcome our new [insert main topic] overlords.
Guilty as charged.
Seriously though, name one media technology that wasn't almost instantly used for Porn.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Whether it works on not, I willing to help test.
Nice try... you almost talked yourself into a job feeling breasts there...
There are very good scanning systems that can build a model (at least, the external skin) of an object from a 3-D object.
In the past, you had a robotic arm, and you'd have to move it along the surface, or to specific points along a grid that had been drawn on the object, so the computer taking the recordings could use sensors to determine the angle of each of the joints, and calculate where in space the tip of the arm was.
Laser range finders have made that obsolete, and they can automate the whole system without touching the object being digitzed.
The clay mockup of a new car design has been done for years; well before they've been using compuers in the process.
There might be uses for this glove as an input device (ie, being able to store an animation of exactly what was done to get it that way... which would be cool for a 'making of' for Wallace and Gromit, but current technology would be more convenient for scanning in objects in which you can easily view all surfaces from the outside.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Isn't the term 'Virtual Reality' so 90's?
But more importantly, is that glove machine washable? Just curious.
---
Lousy rotten karmic retribution.
When I was checking out Johns Hopkins mechanical engineering grad. program, they seemed to have a lot of interesting haptics research...
In my opinion, the best outlet for this sort of thing would be in medicine, where med students could learn how to do operations without killing anyone, and where surgeries could be made more precise as the surgeon worked remotely and his hand tremors were filtered out.
Live free or die
One step closer to becoming rich and famous after I invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet -HatfulOfHollow
How about:
And you thought "finding out the hot girl you were chatting with is really a guy" was creepy...
think about it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
So THIS is what they've been doing with my tuition money :P
I seem to recall O'neil using a similar interface when they found the outpost of the Ancients in Antarctica. (episode guide here) He smooshed his hand around in some jelly-like substance and then suddently, a swarm of arse-kicking energy-beam thingys handed Anubis his ass.
This is a paper from Siggraph 2000 about interfacing computers with modeling clay and lego style blocks:
http://www.merl.com/papers/TR2000-13/
...that I clicked on the link....
....of improper use of punctuation.
I Love The Glove.
It's time to put this to use. We've got to use it to model the female models for upcoming games. Send me one, and tell the chicks to come over for dinner.
steve
As a 3D modeller, I've always wished I could sculpt 3D in a more intuitive manner, such as one would with clay. This is fantastic!
surgeons use 'em....
Phantom units are actually pretty affordable & fun... Like working w/ clay
www.sensable.com
I give it about 3 weeks from the first release of the tech to the first seedy Russian server starts offering 'Br1tney_spear5.sculpt' to go with that new whole-body 'sculpting suit' certain 'adult-oriented vendors' will come out with ;) ...and about 3 minutes before the first release of the user shorts the whole damn thing.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
I just love how the nerds brain works. One person mentions pr0n and that's all everyone can talk about. I was sure someone in the /. community would have noticed this about it: If this product gets marketed, it could mean extreme changes in one of our favorite industries, (no, not pr0n) gaming. Slip one of these on you could easily create the majority of 3D models for a game. Need a toaster? Just run your fingers over one and BAM! you have your model. This could cut a lot of time out of making games so they could focus on other parts of the process. (I wonder what this will do to copyright laws. e.g. "You have a copy of our brand of toaster on your computer! We're gonna sue you")
Just my two cents. -TP
LCpl Winward, USMC I'm Awesome
"... as the user works with a nice malleable substance."
I believe Viagra is suppose to fix this?
See?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
This seems like a good way to have the shooting arcade games at home. You could have a small rifle/pistol/generic platic model loaded with sencors. Then you could calibrate it on your screen shooting various places, a fake laser sight, whatever.
This would be pretty cool to have to press the trigger just the right ammount, bolt action rifle, settings changing on the gun(burst,semi,full auto).
Never Smoke A Banana.
Patents on User Interfaces should not be allowed. The field of User Interfaces requires absolute freedom of innovation. I strongly condemn the government for sanctioning impediments to innovation and to the absolute freedom of use in all areas of User Interfaces.
How are haptic models used in regards to the research and building of Artificially Intelligent Robots? I know programming a computer with language capability is probably the biggest obstacle one faces in robotics, but haptics seems like a spectacular way for a robot to "get a feel" for it's surroundings.
On the screen cap, the title bar said "Ameya Glui", this just sounds scarier then GUI... It sounds.... sticky :P
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
and now we can have the satisfaction of being able to "crumple up" a file when chucking it into the recycle bin and you can slap a program window when it starts misbehaving... just want two gloves and a virtual keyboard and you could get feedback when you press a virtual key...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For those who have never worked with nurbs or even know what nurbs are, nurbs are an alternative approach to modeling, that instead of dealing with individual polygons, you work with curves that form surfaces, which at render-time are converted to polygons. Nurbs are mostly used for engineering applications, such as car designs, furniture, etc where precision is absolutely essential. However, nurbs are not without their own challenges, most notable that it is difficult to create models that are entirely closed; its a little difficult to explain. Basically, imagine modeling a vase with nurbs using nothing but curves... it gets difficult if you want to put a cap on that vase as you need to line up all the edges of the cap to the curvature of the top of the vase. While software packages such as Maya will automatically map the edges of the cap to the curvature of the vase opening, it takes a bit of work to perfect. This new approach to nurbs modeling is very impressive as it would allow artists to take the strongests aspects of nurbs and use them in a much more tactile manner such as modeling with clay in realtime using the gloves whilst a nurbs-based model is created within your 3D program. Essentially, you could cut out the modeler from about 80% of the modeling work, toss it to a normal clay-sculpting artist whom would create the clay model, which the real modeler would then touch up for further use. Good news for sculpting artists, bad news for modelers that can't sculpt.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon