EAGER: Exploring Volumetric Modeling and Design Theory for Virtual Environments

Suny At Stony Brook, Stony Brook NY

Investigators

Abstract

The essence of engineering design is rapid, effective, and creative change towards optimal solutions, which can be accomplished through the iterative modification of numerous design parameters spanning across multi-dimensions. To ameliorate the entire computer-aided engineering processes and enhance engineers' creativity through IT-supported tools, the long-term ambitious goal of this small-scale, CreativeIT project is to develop a creativity-enhancing virtual prototype environment that can greatly facilitate human-computer interaction through physics-based modeling of real-world objects and force-enabled haptic sculpting. The PI's strategy aims to develop a haptics-enabled platform for solid modeling, design, analysis, and relevant applications, which includes a suite of new, volumetric models for representing multi-dimensional datasets as well as haptics-based physical interactions for manipulating and managing such representations. Intellectual Merits: The PI plans to take a unique and integrated approach that aims to incorporate within a single IT system disparate research thrusts that span volumetric, physical, and material modeling for novel data representation; geometric and physics-based algorithms for interaction and analysis; and software tools for various applications. Through a suite of theory-driven research activities, the Broader Impact of this initiative in the long run will be both fundamental and profound to the enhancement of IT tools in a wider spectrum of real applications as well as the broadening of computer accessibility by human beings via haptic interaction. This initiative promises to deliver a new approach for representing, manipulating, and interacting with volumetric datasets in common use in such downstream applications as digital engineering, virtual sculpting for synthesis/analysis, surgical training, and many more.