Long-term research objectives

My long-term research objectives are:-Haptic Landscapes for Virtual Environments (VE); Human-Machine Media-Human biomechanics and neural control of movements.-Biologically inspired control of humanoid robots.-Haptic Landscapes for Virtual Environments (VE); Human-Machine Media. You feel like going for a jog. However, the temperature outside is below freezing and you don't like running in extremely cold weather. No problem: You put on your running outfit and enter your Home VE Center. Next thing you know, you are on a cobblestone street of ancient Rome and the year is 32 B.C. Octavian Caesar has just declared war against Cleopatra, and everyone is hurrying uphill toward the palace to hear his speech. You join them for a while and then decide to go to a calmer place-maybe a beautiful white sandy beach. You start running and let your thoughts go deep into the ocean blue-but not for long! You hear your mom calling you to join her in the VE in New York's Central Park. The VE described above denotes a computer and machine-generated immersive environment which can be perceived with all the user's senses. The user may enter this space, physically interact with virtual objects with appropriate sensory feedback, and manipulate distant objects via telepresence (Minsky 1980). The notion of VE, as used here, is conceptually more general than that of Virtual Reality (VR), where the perceived environment consists of the computer-generated virtual images and audio sensory stimuli. The excitement about VR research reached its peak about 15-20 years ago, when the numerous technical hurdles became apparent. The main problems at that time were an unsatisfactorily slow and limited 3-D graphical user interface not appropriately coupled with the physical motion of the head and eyes (Fisher 1991; 1993), which often caused eye fatigue, headache and motion sickness; and an unsatisfactory overall perception of the VE that lacked real tactile, auditory and olfactory sensory inputs. Nowadays, a very precise real-time head and gaze tracking coupled to powerful 3-D graphical user interface are easily available. My research objectives are 1) to create a prototype of a novel human-machine motion interface integrated with other existing tactile, auditory and vision interfaces; 2) to control the system in a biologically realistic manner so that compelling VE experiences may be generated; and 3) to study both human and machine and their fusion into the VE medium. The motion interface will consist of an advanced foot actuated platform and real-time motion-capture system. …