Artificial Reality
Artificial Reality
Artificial Reality
- Michael A. Gigante -
Prelude
Virtual Reality is a discipline based on a technology which allows
immersion of sight and interaction in tri-dimensional virtual
environs (Surrounding Areas) generated by a computer. Virtual
Reality is progressively attracting the attention of the engineering
world because of its capability to potentially replace, in a short while,
the physical mockups and the training scenes with equally stimulating
environs.
Virtual Environment
• This is a term coined by Myron Krueger in the mid-1970.
• Krueger intended the term to mean “full-body participation in
computer events that is so compelling that it is accepted as
real experience”.
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the technology and therefore few guidelines that enable industry to
make informed decisions about implementation.
Minutiae
Metaverse and Avatars
Telepresence
Real-time telepresence:
• A visual virtual world that you interact with. - Interactions
are reflected in the movement of some real world object.
i.e. a Data Glove being moved to control a robot hand that
moves at the same time.
Delayed telepresence:
• A visual virtual, world that you interact with while
recording the interactions.
• When you are satisfied with the results, play the
interactions across your communications delay.
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Consequently, several tactile presentation systems have been reported
and we can find now and then commercial tactile presentation systems
such as PHANToM. On the other hand, texture recognition is one of
the important items obtained from tactile sensation. Information
obtained from the texture recognition is effective for classification of
products and inspection surface defects. Since human tactile receptors
(mechanoreceptor) are distributed over the entire skin surface, the
tactile presentation devices should present distributed pressure.
Additionally, precise actuators capable of presenting from several
microns to about 100 microns are needed for presenting the surface
texture.
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Determining specifications of the tactile presentation device requires
an investigation of the human tactile sensing system. A cross section
of human glabrous skin is shown in Figure 1. As is shown in Figure 1,
the skin is composed of epidermis; dermis and hypodermis Human
tactile receptors (called mechanoreceptors in neurophysiology) are
located in the dermis and near boundaries between the dermis and the
other layers. Meissner’s corpuscles, Pacinian corpuscles, Merkel cell-
related endings and Ruffini corpuscles are the mechanoreceptors and
distributing over the entire skin. For example, the distance between
two Meissner’s corpuscles is about 600 µm. Mechanoreceptive units
which play a role as the human tactile sensing system consists of the
mechanoreceptors, nerve fibers transmitting signals and nerve cells
processing the signals. So far, the mechanoreceptive units have
been investigated using two kinds of experiments. One is
microneurography, which examines a reaction to a given stimulus
using a tungsten microelectrode inserted into nerve fibers. The other is
psychophsics, which examines a human subject’s replies to questions
regarding the strength of stimulus. As s result of these experiments,
there are Fast adapting type I unit (FA I), Fast adapting type II unit (FA
II), slowly adapting type I (SA I) unit and slowly adapting type II unit
(SA II) in the human tactile sensing system. It was found that
mechanoreceptors of FA I, FA II, SA I and SA II were Meissner’s
corpuscles, Pacinian corpuscles, Merkel cell-related endings and Ruffini
corpuscles, respectively.
Masahiro OHKA,
Shizuoka Institute of Science and Technology,
Toyosawa 2200-2, Fukuroi 437-8555, JAPAN
Tel: +81-538-45-0111, Fax: +81-538-45-0110, [email protected]
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Recognition of fine surface roughness is fulfilled by the aforementioned
FA I. The roughness height caught by SA I is from several µm to
about 100 µm. SA I excites against the roughness height exceeding
several hundred µm. Amplitude below 1 µm is perceived by FA II only
if the stimulus is provided as mechanical vibration. The authors
assume SA II perceives shearing force applied to the skin surface but
this estimation requires further experimental studies to be curried out.
Characteristics of Immersive VR
The head-mounted display (HMD) was the first device providing its
wearer with an immersive experience. Evans and Sutherland
demonstrated a head-mounted stereo display already in 1965. It took
more then 20 years of Research to introduce a commercially available
HMD, the famous "Eye Phone" system (1989).
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A head-mounted display (HMD):
BOOM
The BOOM (Binocular Omni-Orientation Monitor) is a head-coupled
stereoscopic display device. Screens and optical system are housed in
a box that is attached to a multi-link arm. The user looks into the box
through two holes, sees the virtual world, and can guide the box to any
position within the operational volume of the device. Head tracking is
accomplished via sensors in the links of the arm that holds the box.
CAVE
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CAVE system (schematic principle):
Non-immersive VR
Today, the term 'Virtual Reality' is also used for applications that are
not fully immersive. The boundaries are becoming blurred, but all
variations of VR will be important in the future. This includes mouse-
controlled navigation through a three-dimensional environment on a
graphics monitor, stereo viewing from the monitor via stereo glasses,
stereo projection systems, and others. Apple's QuickTime VR, for
example, uses photographs for the modeling of three-dimensional
worlds and provides pseudo look-around and walk-trough capabilities
on a graphics monitor.
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Prophecy
Shared Virtual Environments
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Since one of our main goals is to support a shared world, one of the
key differences between our work and existing 3D platforms is that
each user is represented in the 3D world and each user sees a
representation of all other users in the world (commonly referred to an
as Avatar). In a system that scales to many hundreds of users,
supporting each user as a dynamic entity that roams the 3D world is a
significant technical challenge.
Scaling issues
We face two significant problems when scaling this model. The first is
concerned with distributed consistency and the second with
communication latency.
Consistency
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participants in that space. Further we require that conflicts between
user actions are either avoided, or resolved. Lastly, it is required that
actions in the space maintain their causal relationship so that a user
can make sense of a 'happened before' and 'happens after'
relationship. These requirements mirror our experiences in everyday
life and are essential to any system that attempts to provide a degree
of virtual reality.
Latency
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location to be consistent with another participant 4 (virtual) blocks
away. In that case, maintaining consistency at such a large granularity
forces a high degree of false sharing.
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In figure 3, we can see a simple system with three user objects and
two scenery objects. Object 1 and object two are in each other's auras
and so have a communications link between them.
Once two objects are within each other's aura, we fall back on the
second part of our hybrid approach. Objects in each other's auras will
wish to support a degree of consistency so that they share a view of
the world. Since we are now forced to deal with the issue of
consistency, we need a model that allows us to apply one of a range of
consistency protocols dependent upon the hardware, application and
user constraints. Before we discuss the support for consistency we will
introduce the framework in which we implement the consistency. This
framework is based on a set of replicas which we use as part of our
solution to the latency problem.
Latency hiding
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We have already started to address this problem with our use of auras,
i.e. since we have reduced the participants that must take part in any
data update we have reduced the time needed to reach consensus on
the consistent state. However, this is not enough, since we have still to
make remote requests to access state. When dealing with data we can
usefully class it into three major categories;
• Static data. This is data which is read only and is never changed.
• Dynamic data whose current value may be 'out of date'. This
type of data changes over time, but it is acceptable for accesses
to this data to return old values.
• Dynamic data that must always be 'up to date'. Accesses to this
type of data must always return the most recently updated
value.
In a shared 3D space there are many data values and many actions in
the shared world that are read only or require only a delayed
consistency. For example, querying the owner of an object does not
require shared consistency, or, changing the color of an object may not
require that the change is immediately visible to all participants.
Languages
VRML
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standard under the name VRML97.
Current stipulation
We have built a demonstration platform running in a Unix/Ethernet
environment to explore these ideas. This work is derived from the DIVE
distributed virtual environment platform. Based on this work we have
begun development of a new platform more suited to an environment
where connectivity spans low bandwidth telephone lines, LANS and the
wide area internet.
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“At this stage we only have a minimal platform running as a research
prototype.” This system consists of a PC based clients which are able
to visualize a scene based on the VRML scene description language.
Clients communicate with local database servers using an in-house
protocol, VSCP (very short area communication protocol), that is
optimized for geometric transformations. We currently have a simple
distributed server that supports a limited number of users and
implements the basic ideas discussed above.
Their current a future plans are concerned mainly with extending their
initial prototype. Our first goal is to better explore the cost of
consistency in a wide area network and to adapt their class hierarchy
accordingly.
Applications
As the technologies of virtual reality evolve; the applications of VR
become literally unlimited. It is assumed that VR will reshape the
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interface between people and information technology by offering new
ways for the communication of information, the visualization of
processes, and the creative expression of ideas.
KEY WORDS
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…DIVE (Distributed Virtual Environment)
We are currently working with the DIVE group to implement
some of our ideas within the framework of DIVE 3.0
…Gibson Matrix
It is a 3D virtual world or the cyberspace
…PHANToM
Commercial tactile presentation systems
…CSCW
Computer-supported cooperative work
References
Sir, I referred to many Papers over the Internet which were referred to the following
areas. So I can conclude that my paper is referred to the following references
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