VIRTUAL REALITY HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION EditedbyXin‐XingTang VIRTUALREALITY– HUMANCOMPUTER INTERACTION EditedbyXin‐XingTang Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/3333 Edited by Xin-Xing Tang Contributors Giovanni Saggio, Manfredo Ferrari, Richard M. Levy, Stuart Gilson, Andrew Glennerster, Ying Jin, ShouKun Wang, Naifu Jiang, Yaping Dai, Umar Asif, J.P. Thalen, M.C. van der Voort, Alcínia Z. Sampaio, Joana Prata, Ana Rita Gomes, Daniel Rosário, Piovano Luca, Basso Valter, Rocci Lorenzo, Pasquinelli Mauro, Bar Christian, Marello Manuela, Vizzi Carlo, Lucenteforte Maurizio, Brunello Michela, Racca Filippo, Rabaioli Massimo, Menduni Eleonora, Cencetti Michele, Yusuf Arayici, Paul Coates, Zhuowei Hu, Lai Wei, Wilma Waterlander, Cliona Ni Mhurchu, Ingrid Steenhuis, Elham Andaroodi, Mohammad Reza Matini, Kinji Ono, Kazunori Miyata Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2012 InTech All chapters are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. Notice Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Mirna Cvijic Typesetting InTech Prepress, Novi Sad Cover InTech Design Team First published August, 2012 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechopen.com Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction, Edited by Xin-Xing Tang p. cm. ISBN 978-953-51-0721-7 Contents Preface IX Section 1 Visualization of Virtual Reality and Vision Research 1 Chapter 1 New Trends in Virtual Reality Visualization of 3D Scenarios 3 Giovanni Saggio and Manfredo Ferrari Chapter 2 The Virtual Reality Revolution: The Vision and the Reality 21 Richard M. Levy Chapter 3 High Fidelity Immersive Virtual Reality 41 Stuart Gilson and Andrew Glennerster Section 2 Virtual Reality in Robot Technology 59 Chapter 4 A Novel Rehabilitation Evaluation Method on Virtual Reality Based on RRR-I 61 Ying Jin, ShouKun Wang, Naifu Jiang and Yaping Dai Chapter 5 Virtual Reality to Simulate Adaptive Walking in Unstructured Terrains for Multi-Legged Robots 79 Umar Asif Section 3 Industrial and Construction Applications 103 Chapter 6 Facilitating User Involvement in Product Design Through Virtual Reality 105 J.P. Thalen and M.C. van der Voort Chapter 7 Construction and Maintenance Planning Supported on Virtual Environments 125 Alcínia Z. Sampaio, Joana Prata, Ana Rita Gomes and Daniel Rosário VI Contents Chapter 8 Virtual Simulation of Hostile Environments for Space Industry: From Space Missions to Territory Monitoring 153 Piovano Luca, Basso Valter, Rocci Lorenzo, Pasquinelli Mauro, Bar Christian, Marello Manuela, Vizzi Carlo, Lucenteforte Maurizio, Brunello Michela, Racca Filippo, Rabaioli Massimo, Menduni Eleonora and Cencetti Michele Chapter 9 A System Engineering Perspective to Knowledge Transfer: A Case Study Approach of BIM Adoption 179 Yusuf Arayici and Paul Coates Section 4 Culture and Life of Human 207 Chapter 10 Virtual Reality in Village Folk Custom Tourism 209 Zhuowei Hu and Lai Wei Chapter 11 The Use of Virtual Reality in Studying Complex Interventions in Our Every-Day Food Environment 229 Wilma Waterlander, Cliona Ni Mhurchu and Ingrid Steenhuis Chapter 12 Post Disaster Virtual Revival: 3D CG Manual Reconstruction of a World Heritage Site in Danger 261 Elham Andaroodi, Mohammad Reza Matini and Kinji Ono Chapter 13 Fun Computing 287 Kazunori Miyata Preface In recent years, virtual reality technology has become a very popular technology, which embodies the newest research achievements in the fields of computer technology, computer graphics, sensor technology, ergonomics, human-machine interaction theory. More and more people devote into this field and commit themselves to its research, development and application. Virtual reality technology has become one of the means for human to explore the world. What is brought to us by virtual reality? Firstly, it has changed our ideas. Now, the person, instead of computer, is the main body of information technology. Secondly, it has improved the human- machine interactive manner. Now, the natural interactive manner by hand and sound replaces the passive mode in the past. Thirdly, it has changed the manner of life and entertainment. In a word, virtual reality technology is an important technology to be paid attention, which will bring huge impact to our life and work. The book aims to provide a broader perspective of virtual reality on development and application. In this book, we mainly introduce development trend and application of virtual reality. The book includes four parts, the first part is named as “virtual reality visualization and vision”, which includes new developments in virtual reality visualization of 3D scenarios, virtual reality and vision, high fidelity immersive virtual reality included tracking, rendering and display subsystems. And the second part named as “virtual reality in robot technology” brings forth applications of virtual reality in remote rehabilitation robot-based rehabilitation evaluation method and multi-legged robot adaptive walking in unstructured terrains. And the third part named as “industrial and construction applications” is about the product design, space industry, building information modeling, construction and maintenance by virtual reality, and so on. And the last part, which is named as “culture and life of human”, is about the culture life and multimedia technology. At present, the virtual reality not only is used to improve the existing information system in human-computer interaction means, but also has impact on information organization and management, and even changes design principle of information systems, which will make it adapt to application requirements. However, our reviews regarding virtual reality is only limited to the robot, construction and industry, and culture life and multimedia technology. In fact, virtual reality only succeeds in penetrating total information systems by breaking through the limitation, which will X Preface get more healthy and rapid development. Although three-dimensional stereoscopic display device, head tracking device and rendering techniques based on image have been applied, many hardware and software problems need to be solved. Firstly, improve the hardware support by reducing the price of graphics accelerator and decreasing the dependence to three-dimensional stereoscopic display device. It is impossible for every information system to use the expensive graphics workstation and for everyone using the computer to wear the display device. Secondly, improve software development environment support. For example, whether it is possible that virtual reality display system can be generated only from the image directly, and no requiring manual rendering of three-dimensional geometric models, or the virtual reality environment can be rendered real time only by the software accelerator, that will be a problem. Therefore, it is necessary for us to summarize the available technology and application, and discuss the future development trend of virtual reality. Despite new advances in the field of virtual reality technology cannot be covered exhaustively in this volume, we hope this book will help readers to understand how to create and apply the virtual reality system. Xin-Xing Tang Ph.D School of Mechatronic Engineering, Changchun University of Technology, Changchun, Jilin Province, China [...]... well as it happens in reality So, details were furnished of the AutoMultiScopic 20 Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction for 3D Vision, in particular with the description of the Alioscopy screen, and details of the Holo-Vision for screen-less Vision, in particular with the description of the HoloMachine But an immersive system must be completed with the possibility of interaction for the user... the manipulation and storage of data to create the interactive imagery, to the delivery of the imagery and creating the immersive experience on a user's computer Video shootings are realized by means of a spherical 6 Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction device in which different cameras are embedded in a way that images can be captured all around, with the only exception of the real base of... content can change upon the surrounding context decided by the user Everyday objects sojourning in a beam are turned into dedicated projection surfaces and tangible interaction devices The approach is based 8 Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction on a pico-projector and on a Kinect sensor (by Microsoft Corporation) Pico-projectors and Kinect capabilities (motion tracking and depth sensing), might... uncomfortable eyewear of any kind of glasses On the other end, an important amount of data must be processed for every frame since it is formed by eight images at the 14 Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction same time Current personal computers are, in any case, capable to deal with these amount of data since the powerful graphic cards available today 4.3 Transparent displays Cutting-edge display... and more mandatory, since it allows more easily the humans to see patterns, relationships, trends, otherwise difficult to gather This chapter describes the actual requirements for 3D Visualization in VR, the current state and the near future of the new trends The final goal is to furnish to the reader a complete 4 Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction panorama of the state of the art and of... intelligence and awareness critical to mission success (Keijsper, 2007) The piloting of these aircraft is assisted by the onboard computer capability To assist the pilot in making critical decisions, a helmet mounted display gives information on targets 22 Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction and the aircraft’s control systems Today’s modern jet aircrafts bear little similarity to the early predecessors... diffusion of VR in the future 24 Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction 1.3 Building the market for VR Every technology benefits from an application that creates a growing demand Without growth in markets, products remain in a niche supported by a few high-end users, e.g the flight simulator To drive down unit costs, products must appeal to a growing audience Like the first computers built after the... technology that is still too complex and too expensive to find common applications in everyday life, so new possibilities are currently under investigation Figure 8 An example of hologram 16 Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction A first new type of approach comes from the public lightshow displays, in which a beam of laser light is shone through a diffuse cloud of fog, but the results are not as good... reflection/transmission angle), the viewer experiences a sort of “holographic” view, since he/she has the illusion of the depth, having two offset images from the same source but separated to each eye 18 Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction (a) (b) (c) Figure 11 3D holographic scenes of Giulio Polibio and his wife in their domus at the archeological site of Pompeii in Italy (Courtesy by PFM Multimedia Company)... of the viewer The brain is then able to combine these two-dimensional images and a resulting perception of 3-D depth is realized This technique is known as Stereoscopy or 3D imaging 10 Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction Three are the main techniques developed to present two offset images one for eye: the user wear eyeglasses to combine the two separate images from two offset sources; the user . VIRTUAL REALITY HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION EditedbyXin‐XingTang VIRTUAL REALITY – HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION EditedbyXin‐XingTang Virtual Reality – Human. orders@intechopen.com Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction, Edited by Xin-Xing Tang p. cm. ISBN 978-953-51-0721-7 Contents Preface IX Section 1 Visualization of Virtual Reality. creating the immersive experience on a user's computer. Video shootings are realized by means of a spherical Virtual Reality – Human Computer Interaction 6 device in which different cameras