Research Statement - Marko B

My long-term research objectives are:-Haptic Landscapes for Virtual Environments,-Biologically inspired control of humanoid robots,-Human biomechanics and neural control of movements.-Haptic Landscapes for Virtual Environments. You feel like going for a jog. However, the temperature outside is below freezing point and you don't like running on a very cold weather. No problem. You put on your running outfit and enter your Home Virtual Environment Center. Next thing you know, you are on a cobblestone street of ancient Rome and the year is 32 B.C. Octavian is just declaring the war against Cleopatra; everyone is hurrying uphill toward the palace to hear his speech. You join them for a while and then decide to go for calmer place – a beautiful white sand beach. You start running and let your thoughts go deep into the ocean blue. However not for long – your mom is calling you to join her in the VE NY Central Park. The Virtual Environment (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), name coined by Jaron Lanier in early eighties (Kac 1993), 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 it was realized that there are yet many technical hurdles to be addressed. The main problems at a time were: a) 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), often causing eye fatigue, headache and motion sickness, and b) an unsatisfactory overall perception of the VE that lacked real tactile, auditory and olfactory sensory inputs. 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 novel VE medium. The motion interface will consist of an advanced treadmill and real-time motion-capture system. The system's primary function will …