``I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.''
Lao Tsu, 604-531 BC
The goal of this CAREER project is to make a tool for haptic structural modeling. This tool will be a virtual environment. A user will be able to see and fly through a large structure. The user will, also, be able to touch the structure, to feel its resistance, and to push on it. To do this, I intend to merge a haptic interface tool into an augmented reality setting.
My objectives for the next four years are:
1. To make a virtual environment for modeling three-dimensional frame structures using VRML and interface it to DRAIN-3DX, a program for structural analysis of civil structures.
2. To incorporate a haptic interface in this virtual environment and develop a haptic rendering methodology for large structure, enabling the user to push the structure and feel its deformation.
3. To interface the virtual modeling environment and the real laboratory environment by making it possible to address virtual and real sub-structures through the same interface.
Development of a haptic structural modeling tool is a challenge. Haptic rendering of large objects is an open problem. Design of a haptic interface to virtual and real substructures has not been done before, but may have a broader significance for a Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), a five-year NSF initiative taking off in 1999.
The challenges are here, but the benefits of having a haptic learning tool are huge! Students will be able to touch structures, resist land slides, feel earthquake vibrations and immerse in fluid flow. This haptic tool will take learning from hearing and seeing to touching and doing... and understanding, as Lao Tsu meant two-and-a-half millenia ago.
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