VRAI 2002 - Virtual Reality and its Application in Industry

A Report on VRAI 2002 - Virtual Reality and its Application in Industry

Reported by Zhigeng Pan, Steve Cunningham and Judy Brown

One hundred and sixty delegates from twelve countries attended the VRAI 2002(Virtual Reality and its Application in Industry) conference, April 9-12 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, P.R. China.

Background of the conference:

This conference, organized by the China Society of Image and Graphics, provides an international forum for presentation and discussion of the latest developments in fundamental research and practical applications in virtual reality and its applications. The conference was co-organized by the VR Committee of the China Society of Image and Graphics; the State Key Lab of CAD&CG at Zhejiang University, China; and the Hangzhou Institute of Electronics Engineering, China. It was co-sponsored by EUROGRAHICS, the VR Society in Japan (VRSJ), Korean Association of VR (KAVR), IEEE-CS Beijing, Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), VR and Visualization Committee of China Computer Federation (CCF), and Machine Perception and VR Committee of China Association of Artificial Intelligence (CAAI).

VRAI 2002 is the third international conference on VR held in China. The first one (International Workshop on VR and Visualization in Scientific Computing).was held in 1995 in Hangzhou, China. Selected papers from this workshop were published as a Special Issue of Computers & Graphics Vol. 20, No.2,1996 (Guest Editor: Dr. Martin Goebel and Prof. Jiaoying Shi). The second workshop (International Workshop on VR and Application)was held in 1999. The plenary talks from this workshop were published by The International Journal of Virtual Reality, Vol. 4, No3, 2000 (CD-ROM edition, Content Editor: Prof. Zhigeng Pan). In 2002, the conference focuses on the theme "VR and its Industrial Application," and selected papers will be published in a set of international journals, such as Computers & Graphics (Guest Editors: Prof. Jiaoying Shi, Prof. Zhigeng Pan), and International Journal of Image and Graphics.

About Hangzhou

Hangzhou is extremely rich in natural and cultural resources. There are two State-level scenic areas within the city area: West Lake scenery area and Fuchun river-Xin'an river - A-Thousand-Islet Lake scenery area. There is one State-level nature preservation area: Tianmu natural preservation area, two State-level forest parks: A-Thousand-Islet forest park and Daqishan forest park. West Lake, which is described as "Oriental Pearl ", is located on the east of the city proper, with one side facing the city and hills on the other three sides.. Hangzhou, with its surrounding hills and the famous West Lake, ranks as one of the ten most scenic places in China. The conference organizers arranged a half-day tour of West Lake for oversea guests.

Opening session

The conference opened with eight invited talks and closed with four invited talks. Between these plenary sessions, there were three parallel tracks that included papers on VR algorithms, VR systems, VR Applications, User interaction in VR, and distributed VR. Conference program co-chair Jiaoying Shi chaired the opening session, beginning with brief greetings from the Presidents of Zhejiang University and Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Engineering, the conference hosts. Martin Goebel, the other program co-chair, also welcomed attendees and said a few words about the conference. There were 165 paper submissions, with 66 acceptances, giving an acceptance rate of 40%. In addition, there were twelve invited plenary speakers and three tutorials. At the end of the opening session, there was a formal signing of the Cooperation Agreement between ACM SIGGRAPH and China Society of Image and Graphics (CSIG.) Figure xx shows Judy Brown, President of ACM SIGGRAPH, Yunhe Pan, Chair of CSIG, and Jiaoying Shi, Vice Chair of CSIG signing the agreement. Alan Chalmers, ACM SIGGRAPH Vice President, was unable to attend and had signed it in advance.

Plenary speakers - first day

The first plenary speaker was Katsushi Ikeuchi, University of Tokyo, speaking on Modeling from Reality.There are many kinds of information that need to be captured from reality in order to simulate it. This includes shape information, photometric information (surface, texture, and specularity), and environmental information. These must then be merged into a consistent model for VR use, whether that use is geometric or image-based modeling. Techniques were presented for separating color information into specular and lambertian color, as well as polarization techniques for separating the specular and lambertian components of an image. This is being applied to a number of cultural heritage projects, including several large Buddhas in Japan, Thailand, and China, as well as their historical environments.

Judith R. Brown, ACM SIGGRAPH, spoke on Advanced Simulation and Tele-Immersive Collaborations. As computing and network technologies have advanced dramatically, the effectiveness of simulations has increased, enabling innovations in science, engineering, cultural heritage, distance education, media communications, medicine, and art and architecture. Brown focussed on applications, beginning with previous work done by the Advanced Research Computing Services (ARCS) group she had managed at The University of Iowa. She then presented a variety of international tele-immersive collaborations from the International Grid (iGRID) special event at the INET2000 conference. See http://www.startap.net/igrid2000/. These examples were furnished courtesy of Maxine Brown, Electronic Visualization Laboratory, University of Illinois, Chicago. The talk featured the capabilities and applications of the new U. S. National Advanced Driving Simulator, located at The University of Iowa. See http://www.nads-sc.uiowa.edu/

Harry Shum, Microsoft Research Asia, spoke on IBR: The Intersection of Computer Vision and Computer Graphics. The presentation was based on the author's SIGGRAPH 1999 paper on concentric mosaics. The goal of this work is to reduce the dimension of the image-based rendering problem, and concentric mosaics can reduce this to four dimensions instead of the much larger number of dimensions in an unstructured problem.

Martin Goebel, GMD, discussed Trends in VR Display and Interaction Technology for Industrial Applications. The holobench, or responsive workbench, and several other examples of display technology were described, including the iCONE, a cylindrical system with sloping sides. Display technologies included examples with olfactory display or sonification effects. The results of olfactory display seem disappointing, but may have important use for special applications such as hazardous material training. There is little industry support for sonification but it seems important to tell stories or do science work. Different technologies have different values for different kinds of work. Workbenches are seen to be better than caves for science work, and two workbenches are a good platform for collaborative work. However, caves seem to be better for storytelling and education because they are more immersive and provide more of an emotional experience. A summary of projection systems with their fit for different tasks was given.

Mark Green, City University of Hong Kong, presented VR Authoring Tools for Non-Programmers: A Case Study. There are great tools for creative people to work in traditional media, but VR has very few authoring tools for creative people. Green also pointed out that, while these tools are very powerful, they limit the creative capabilities of their users. For example, students around the world are now learning packages like Maya, and there are some aspects of traditional Asian design that are being lost because these packages do not support them. Effective VR tools need to support many features, including object behavior; nonstandard devices; interaction with a user, between users, and between objects; visual richness; support for narrative and for scenes and transitions; and multiple media. Green described current work at the City University of Hong Kong on a scripting system in which authors specify behaviors programmers define actions, and any new action is available to all the objects in the system.

Yi Tan, Princeton Video Image Corp., spoke about Virtual Imaging and its Commercial Application in TV Broadcasting. Some techniques were described that are now used to insert images into television broadcasts (usually sports broadcasts) in real time. These techniques involve feature extraction, camera instrumentation, perspective correction, tracking, and other processes. Similar processes could be used to support augmented reality systems.

Kunwoo Lee, Seoul National University, presented Multi-Resolution Modeling Operators for Components and Assemblies. In developing a practical environment for collaborative design, it is desirable to use level-of-detail techniques to adjust representations of components or models. Two operators were presented to simplify boundary representation models: pruning the feature tree, to reduce the number of features presented in the model, and wrapping an object, or replacing the object by covering its concave regions.

Marcelo Zuffo, University of São Paolo, presented Cluster Computing for Multiprojection Immersive Spaces. He described the current state-of-the-art of commodity cluster computing for multiprojection immersive spaces. Multiprojection immersive spaces, such as CAVEs, have traditionally been built using high-performance graphics systems. However, clusters of commodity personal computers can provide the graphics performance needed for these applications, and experiences and examples were presented to show how this is done. Advantages of such commodity clusters include low cost, scalability, and flexibility.

Parallel paper sessions

On the second day, parallel paper sessions were held, three parallel paper sessions in the morning and two in the afternoon. There were a number of papers throughout the parallel tracks that dealt with VR applications: " Virtual Reality Enhanced Training for Minimally -Invasive Vascular Intervention " by Yiyu Cai et al from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore was an example of applying virtual reality and visualization techniques to medical treatments. This gives an alternative to using a cadaver, animals, or patients. Using haptic devices, the virtual vascular patient can be modeled for any vascular disease and can include intervention devices (catheters, guidewire, balloons), motion tracking, and pressure tracking. " EasyBowling: A Virtual Bowling System for Small Space " by Weiwei Xu et al from Zhejiang University discussed the implementation techniques EasyBowling system, which has a real, physical bowling alley about six feet long and uses a real bowling ball, the speed and direction of which are tracked by a camera on the computer above the bowling lane. The computer then determines which of the virtual pins have been knocked down. Future work include 3D realistic audio rendering and internet-based game play. "The Design and Implementation of Kyongju VR Theatre" by Hyoung-Gon Kim et al.( Korea Institute of Science and Technology, KOREA) provided another example of applying VR to entertainment.

In the distributed VR track, Lifeng Sun, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, discussed "Building Collaborative Workshop of Metasynthetic Engineering Based on Virtual Conferencing Space." This included limitations of desktop conferencing systems, defining the conference space as the environment hared by all participants, and a space model of awareness and interaction. Asame Alhalabi, Japan Advanced Technology of Science and Technology, spoke on "Network Latency Issue in a Cooperative Shared Haptic Virtual Environment." He differentiated between a collaborative haptic virtual environment, where sharing users take turns manipulating and feeling a virtual object, and a cooperative haptic virtual environment, where interacting users simultaneously manipulate and act on the same object at the same time. This kind of bi-directional interaction is beneficial in medical tele-training, telerobotics, tele-rehabilitation, and entertainment

Visit to Zhejiang University

Some of the participants visited the State Key Lab for Computer Aided Design and Computer Graphics at Zhejiang University. Students presented their research on morphing, free form deformation, and non-photorealistic rendering. This included hand-drawn animations and image-based synthesis of Chinese landscape painting.

Plenary speakers - third day

The third day included four plenary talks, an afternoon sight seeing tour of west Lake, and the conference banquet.

Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, University of Geneva, discussed Physics Based Simulation of Hair and Clothes. Modeling of the human body can be time-consuming, but an approach was presented for "cloning" an individual based on three photographs and a small set of measurements. This creates bodies to H-ANIM standards from a small set of general template bodies.

A number of problems in simulating hair and clothing are seen to be approachable as physics problems. These include interaction of hair with itself and self-collision for clothing. Cloth and garment simulations may be done with mechanical parametric approaches, and defining the parameters of cloth can provide clothing that moves realistically.

Ruth Aylett, University of Salford, presented Intelligent Virtual Environments. Intelligent virtual environments are virtual environments that incorporate areas of artificial intelligence in their creation and/or operation. Adding this intelligence adds context to help users understand what they are seeing so they can interact in natural language, adds higher-level representations of objects to add meaning to the scene, makes the environment more dynamic and inhabited, and provides higher-level interfaces with the users. Among the other capabilities added by intelligence is their ability to add agents with emotions and individual narrative to an environment. However, artificial intelligence and computer graphics have very different viewpoints, and there are a number of research questions about the role of intelligence in virtual environments.

Application area driving this technology include the computer games industry, e-commerce (desire for talking heads type presenters), virtual environment researchers seeking dynamics, and artificial intelligence researchers seeking good testbeds. An agent must have emotion to be believable because humans have emotions.

Soonhung Han, KAIST, Korea, discussed the Application of VR for Driving Simulation: Virtual Bicycle Racing Simulator. In the VR Institute at KAIST, researchers are developing simulators for bicycle racing. These simulators are small, inexpensive, and have relatively simple mechanisms - and they are sports-oriented and fun to use. One bicycle is mounted on a 6DF platform, but a newer example is mounted on a 4DF platform with yaw, pitch, roll, and heave controls that gives a much better approximation to the measured behavior of a real bicycle. Both integrate four PCs to control the visual, sound, motion, and dynamics aspects of the simulator. Han suggested that simulation sickness cannot be eliminated, but it can be reduced by controlling parameters.

Dirk Reiners, FhG-IGD, Germany, closed the sessions with a presentation on OpenSG: A Modern Open Source Scenegraph for Virtual Reality Applications. Scene graphs are graphics systems designed to permit much higher-level hierarchical design than is supported by APIs such as OpenGL. OpenSG is a scene graph that is designed to support design and development for VR applications. It includes a number of features such as multithreading, multiple pipe support, extensibility, cross-platform operation, and handling free-form surfaces. It is intended to fit into the same niche as Java3D and Open Performer but to be open source and to have features that fit better into the VR development world. It is intended to be rolled out at the SIGGRAPH 2002 conference and to be released in late 2002.

Advanced seminar

The conference organizers also organized a one and a half day advanced seminar after the paper presentation sessions. In the morning, it was a domestic-oriented event, given in Chinese. The afternoon courses were given in English. The seminar included five courses:

●"Recovering Geometry from Images" (Prof. Hongbin Zha, Peking University, China),

● "Audio Rendering in Virtual Environment" (Prof. Aiguo Song, South-East University, China),

●" Animation Technique and its Application" (Prof. Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, University of Geneva, Switzerland; Prof. Daniel Thalmann EPFL, Switzerland),

● "Human animation" (Prof. Hyeong-Seok Ko, Seoul National University, Korea),

●"Virtual Reality: Immersion, Decisions, Empathy"(Prof. D. Zeltzer, Fraunhofer CRCG, USA ).

The seminar was very successful. In addition, the ACM SIGGRAPH video "The Story of Computer Graphics" was shown to the audience at the end of the conference.

A tour of the Yangtze River and the Three Gorges was taken by some of the conference participants, immediately following the conference. Much of this beautiful scenery along the Yangtze will disappear after the largest dam in the world is built across the Yangtze River. Completion date for the dam is 2009.

Future

To further internationalize this conference, the sponsor is planning to hold the VRAI conference outside China, Singapore may be a good choice, since attendees from Nanyang Technology University are very interested in hosting it. For additional information, see http://www.cad.zju.edu.cn/VRAI2002.