Chapter 7. Motion Tracking Requirements and Technologies

The science of motion tracking is fascinating because of its highly interdisciplinary nature and wide range of applications. This chapter will attempt to capture the interdisciplinary approach by organizing the subject differently from the several excellent review articles already available (Meyer et al, 1992; Ferrin, 1991; Bhatnagar, 1993

The Visual Interaction Platform

Abstract: The Visual Interaction Platform (VIP) is an Augmented Reality system that builds on human skills of real world object manipulation and allows unhindered human-human communication in a collaborative situation. The platform supports architectural design and medical planning through the use of physical props for interaction with 2D and 3D data. Keywords: Augmented Reality, Human-Computer Interaction, Pen interaction, 3D interaction 1 Platform Components The Visual Interaction Platform (VIP) is an augmented reality platform that enables different natural interaction techniques such as writing, sketching, manipulating and navigating in 2D and 3D data (Aliakseyeu et al 2002). The set up of the VIP uses the following (Figure 1): • An LCD projector to create a large computer workspace on a horizontal surface – actionperception space (2 in Figure 1). • An UltraPad A2 ® (Wacom ®) digitizer tablet as the horizontal surface (6 in Figure 1). • An ultrasonic wireless position-tracking device o

Ergonomic design of school furniture: challenges for the portuguese schools

It can be observed an increased concern about the school classrooms, in particular about the study and design of school furniture fitting the students’ needs and anthropometrics characteristics. The main aim of this study was to perform an anthropometric survey, considering the main anthropometric dimensions and, in accordance, to define the dimensions and characteristics of school furniture for Portuguese students of the 1st education cycle using valuable and validated ergonomic criteria. The analyzed sample includes, so far, 432 students. Obtained results seem to reinforce the need to consider the specificity of the anthropometric characteristics of the Portuguese students by adding an extra size mark for school furniture in a future revision of the corresponding standard.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Bare-Hand Volume Cracker for Raw Volume Data Analysis

Analysis of raw volume data generated from different scanning technologies faces a variety of challenges, related to search, pattern recognition, spatial understanding, quantitative estimation, and shape description. In a previous study, we found that the Volume Cracker (VC) 3D interaction (3DI) technique mitigated some of these problems, but this result was from a tethered glove-based system with users analyzing simulated data. Here, we redesigned the VC by using untethered bare-hand interaction with real volume datasets, with a broader aim of adoption of this technique in research labs. We developed symmetric and asymmetric interfaces for the Bare-Hand Volume Cracker (BHVC) through design iterations with a biomechanics scientist. We evaluated our asymmetric BHVC technique against standard 2D and widely used 3D interaction techniques with experts analyzing scanned beetle datasets. We found that our BHVC design significantly outperformed the other two techniques. This study contributes a practical 3DI design for scientists, documents lessons learned while redesigning for bare-hand trackers, and provides evidence suggesting that 3D interaction could improve volume data analysis for a variety of visual analysis tasks. Our contribution is in the realm of 3D user interfaces tightly integrated with visualization, for improving the effectiveness of visual analysis of volume datasets. Based on our experience, we also provide some insights into hardware-agnostic principles for design of effective interaction techniques