Development of a novel virtual coordinate measuring machine

Existing VCMMs (virtual coordinate measuring machine) have been mainly developed to either simulate the measurement process hence enabling the off-line programming, or to perform error analysis and uncertainty evaluation. Their capability and performance could be greatly improved if there is a complete solution to cover the whole process and provide an integrated environment. The aim of this study is to develop such a VCMM that not only supports measurement process simulation, but also performs uncertainty evaluation. It makes use of virtual reality techniques to provide an accurate model of a physical CMM, together with uncertainty evaluation. An interface is also provided to communicate with CMM controller, allowing the measuring programs generated and simulated in the VCMM to be executed or tested on the physical CMM afterwards. This paper discusses the proposal of a novel VCMM design and the preliminary results

Cross-Platform Presentation of Interactive Volumetric Imagery

Volume data is useful across many disciplines, not just medicine. Thus, it is very important that researchers have a simple and lightweight method of sharing and reproducing such volumetric data. In this paper, we explore some of the challenges associated with volume rendering, both from a classical sense and from the context of Web3D technologies. We describe and evaluate the pro- posed X3D Volume Rendering Component and its associated styles for their suitability in the visualization of several types of image data. Additionally, we examine the ability for a minimal X3D node set to capture provenance and semantic information from outside ontologies in metadata and integrate it with the scene graph

Rapid Prototyping for Virtual Environments

Development of Virtual Environment (VE) applications is challenging where application developers are required to have expertise in the target VE technologies along with the problem domain expertise. New VE technologies impose a significant learning curve to even the most experienced VE developer. The proposed solution relies on synthesis to automate the migration of a VE application to a new unfamiliar VE platform/technology. To solve the problem, the Common Scene Definition Framework (CSDF) is developed, that serves as a superset/model representation of the target virtual world. Input modules are developed to populate the framework with the capabilities of the virtual world imported from VRML 2.0 and X3D formats. The synthesis capability is built into the framework to synthesize the virtual world into a subset of VRML 2.0, VRML 1.0, X3D, Java3D, JavaFX, JavaME, and OpenGL technologies, which may reside on different platforms. Interfaces are designed to keep the framework extensible to different and new VE formats/technologies. The framework demonstrated the ability to quickly synthesize a working prototype of the input virtual environment in different VE formats

Assessment of 3D viewers for the display of interactive documents in the learning of graphic engineering

The purpose of this study is to determine which 3D viewers should be used for the display of interactive graphic engineering documents, so that the visualization and manipulation of 3D models provide useful support to students of industrial engineering (mechanical, organizational, electronic engineering, etc). The technical features of 26 3D visualization software programmes (viewers, publishers, 3D output formats) are examined, to select the three visualization configurations that best meet our needs at the Graphic Expression Department of the University of Burgos (Solidworks plus Solidworks eDrawings; Catia plus Catia eDrawings and 3DXML; several Computer-Aided Design software programmes plus Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended). These are compared using the Quality Function Deployment tool known as House of Quality. The House of Quality has enabled us to identify and quantify the importance attached by engineering teachers to each of their requirements for 3D viewers, and to identify and quantify the technical importance of each of the measurable features of these viewers

The addition of the haptic modality to the virtual reality modeling language

Thesis (S.B. and M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (p. 40-43).by Evan F. Wies.S.B.and M.Eng

Engaging Undergraduate Students in Transportation Studies through Simulating Transportation for Realistic Engineering Education and Training (STREET)

The practice of transportation engineering and planning has evolved substantially over the past several decades. A new paradigm for transportation engineering education is required to better engage students and deliver knowledge. Simulation tools have been used by transportation professionals to evaluate and analyze the potential impact of design or control strategy changes. Conveying complex transportation concepts can be effectively achieved by exploring them through simulation. Simulation is particularly valuable in transportation education because most transportation policies and strategies in the real world take years to implement with a prohibitively high cost. Transportation simulation allows learners to apply different control strategies in a risk-free environment and to expose themselves to transportation engineering methodologies that are currently in practice. Despite the advantages, simulation, however, has not been widely adopted in the education of transportation engineering. Using simulation in undergraduate transportation courses is sporadic and reported efforts have been focused on the upper-level technical elective courses. A suite of web-based simulation modules was developed and incorporated in the undergraduate transportation courses at University of Minnesota. The STREET (Simulating Transportation for Realistic Engineering Education and Training) research project was recently awarded by NSF (National Science Foundation) to develop web-based simulation modules to improve instruction in transportation engineering courses and evaluate their effectiveness. Our ultimate goal is to become the epicenter for developing simulation-based teaching materials, an active textbook, which offers an interactive learning environment to undergraduate students. With the hand-on nature of simulation, we hope to improve student understanding of critical concepts in transportation engineering and student motivation toward transportation engineering, and improve student retention in the field. We also would like to disseminate the results and teaching materials to other colleges to integrate the simulation modules in their curricula.Transportation Education and Training, Transportation Simulation, Roadway Geometry Design