SGER: Exploring Digital Sculpture with Two-hand Haptics

Despite the most recent advancement of computing and interaction technologies, it still remains a great technical challenge to faithfully and efficiently represent real-world objects in a digital computer and to develop effective human-computer interfaces for managing and communicating with such CAD models. In particular, no one has yet developed a robust graphical model and accompanying human-computer interface that can simultaneously (a) represent volumetric shapes of arbitrary topology and anisotropic material distributions, (b) efficiently simulate complex physical and dynamic behaviors in real time; and (c) facilitate natural, convenient interaction between human users and such 3D digital representations. In an effort to tackle the aforementioned challenges, and thereby bridge the large gap between real-world physical objects and CAD-based digital models, and improve communication and interaction between human beings and computer generated virtual environments, the PI will in this project develop Digital Sculpture, a novel two-hand haptic interface for HCI. Digital Sculpture will employ a new graphical model and solid subdivision scheme that unify modeling and animation for both geometry and material properties within a single physical framework, and will include a suite of two-hand, haptics-based interactive techniques for managing and manipulating the new representations in virtual environments. To date, two-hand haptic systems have been severely under-explored; an important outcome of this project will be the comprehensive investigation of a two-hand haptic system. The PI will validate the effectiveness of the new theoretic, algorithmic, computational, and software techniques that facilitate the interaction of Digital Sculpture in virtual environments via a two-hand haptic interface, via comprehensive usability studies that compare his technique and paradigm with existing ones in order to assess the benefits of the anticipated improvements. Variants of the new technique will also be explored (e.g., one-hand vs. two-hand Digital Sculpture to assess the gains provided by a haptic input from a second glove, even under conditions when the second glove remains stationary). Broader Impacts: The novel HCI paradigm of a two-hand haptic interface would be invaluable in all applications in which 3D structures must be manipulated, including for example surgical simulation and virtual sculpting. The comprehensive study of novel, two-hand haptic interaction techniques will further deepen our understanding of haptic-based human-computer interaction.