Sense
“The
most overlooked advantage of owning a computer is that if they foul up there’s
no law against whacking them around a bit” – Eric Porterfield
Computers have no emotional feelings, and even if they did they would
hardly have any idea what we were doing to them anyway.
Making a
Sensible Computer
Head Tracking
Not only does head tracking
allow the computer to draw the world, it also tells the computer where we are
and what we are looking at.
Gaze-based selection
involves using the direction the head is pointing to select objects.
Gaze-based navigation involves using the direction the head is pointing to
determine where to go next.
Where are we?
An augmented reality system
uses the physical world as its environment, but a virtual world will most
likely be different from the virtual world.
Current head tracking systems have limitations to their range.
Even if they had no range, projection display systems and wireless communications
limit the range within which we can deliver visual input.
However, even with unlimited range, it is not practical to allocate as much
space in the real world for freely moving in the virtual world.
This poses a problem for navigating
to other locations within the virtual world.
Haptic Navigation Techniques
Realizing the goal of
accurately reproducing the sensation of moving within an environment is a
difficult goal.
While the reproduction of 3D visuals based on head motion is relatively
straight forward, reproducing very complex motion of walking is much more
difficult.
The very physical nature of the activity means that the device must be a
mechanical device and includes all of the typical problems associated with haptic devices:
Examples include:
Software Navigation Techniques
The practicalities of haptic systems force us to consider less intuitive
navigation methods.
These methods are very practical and useful for navigation, but they disrupt
attempts to make the interface invisible.
Can you see me?
Walking simulation systems
and/or gesture based systems require tracking parts of the body that may prove
awkward for traditional tracking setups such as magnetic systems.
Can use computer
vision techniques to estimate the motion of the legs or to follow
simple gestures.
Some simple techniques can
give a rough estimate of the location of the user and their limbs:
Can you feel me?
Although truly flexible haptic systems are many years off, physical props can
replace them in specific situations.