Project Proposed: This project, developing instruments for interactive visual data exploration and visualization, provides a powerful, easy-to-use information-rich cyberinfrastructure instrumentation in support of scientific discovery. Advanced visualization instruments serve as the eyepieces of a telescope or microscope, enabling researchers to view their data in cyberspace, and better manage the increased scale and complexity of accessing and analyzing the data. The OmegaTable and OmegaDesk are such eyepieces. The former supports multiple users sitting or standing around a table, and the latter is a single-user device that will ultimately replace the desk in one?s office. Both unify ultra-high resolution computer-enhanced collaboration workspaces and autostereoscopic virtual environments with multi-touch-sensitive surfaces so that users can intuitively point, write, touch, and manipulate the information displayed, and communicate and share this information with remote colleagues. These instruments act as digital assistants, anticipating and enabling those who work with them, benefiting global scientific collaboratories as well as providing a foundation for new computer science research. For the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) at UIC, these instruments represent the culmination of decades of experience and expertise developing immersive environments, from the room-size CAVE in the early 1990s, to the office-sized Immersa Desk in 1994, to GeoWall in 2000, and the more recent ultra-high resolution Lambda Vision tiled display wall and autosteoscopic Varrier tiled-display wall. Each new generation of display technology provides some advanced features ? higher resolution, unencumbered autostereoscopic viewing, multi-Gigabit network connectivity, and intuitive user interfaces - better coupling worldwide scientific virtual organizations, and better integrating scientific workplaces with advanced cyberinfrastructure. OmegaTable and OmegaDesk combine all this functionality in one set of instruments, enabling communities to view and share high-resolution 2D, 2.5D, and 3D stereoscopic imagery over distance and to manipulate the imagery with an intuitive touch interface. The most unique capability lies in their ability to display 2D and 3D stereoscopic imagery simultaneously, without users needing to wear 3D glasses of head-tracking equipment. The instruments open new opportunities in virtual reality, human-computer interaction, high-speed networking, scientific visualization, and Grid computing.
Broader Impacts: This project enables state-of-the-art equipment, opportunities, and supervision to enhance student education (providing scientific communities with highly integrated virtual-reality collaboration environments), to work with industry to commercialize new technologies that advance science and engineering, and to continue on-going partnerships with domain scientists world-wide. In addition to enhancing education, the instrument provides summer internships and enables jobs upon graduation. Society as a whole has much to gain by the possibilities to solve complex environmental, medical, and economic issues that these instruments offer.
The effectiveness of presenting data in different modalities has been the subject of previous research. Two-dimensional (2D) views are better at establishing precise relationships between data and/or visual search, while three-dimensional (3D) views are very effective for 3D object manipulation and navigation. Combining both views leads to good or better analysis and navigation performance than using one view alone; e.g., in an air traffic control simulation, a 2D display is better for checking aircraft speed and altitudes while a 3D display is better for performing collision avoidance. OmegaDesk, developed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois at Chicago, is a hybrid visualization environment that unifies high-resolution computer-enhanced collaboration workspaces and stereoscopic virtual environments with multi-touch surfaces and camera interfaces, enabling users to intuitively point, write, touch and gesture to manipulate the information displayed, and communicate and share this information with remote colleagues. OmegaDesk is a Work Desk -- i.e., computer-enhanced furniture that can be easily integrated into an office environment -- and provides researchers with a powerful, easy-to-use, information-rich, cyberinfrastructure instrument in support of scientific discovery. OmegaDesk development consisted of several phases. Phase 1, completed in 2008, enabled the development of TacTile, a multi-touch table that acted as a big "iPhone". TacTile was immediately replicated by the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM), Argonne National Laboratory, Louisiana State University’s Center for Computation & Technology, and the Arkansas Museum of Discovery. However, by 2011, commercial multi-touch technologies were more prevalent, so although TacTile was never commercialized, collaborators continued to work with EVL to develop content for these types of displays. Phase 2 involved the development of OmegaDesk, which consists of two active-stereo LCD displays, one oriented vertically and the other oriented horizontally at a 45-degree angle, with touch overlay and camera interfaces. Both displays are synchronized to work together, and both displays are capable of showing 2D or 3D information. Before selecting active-stereo displays, EVL pursued auto-stereo research based on Dynallax, a technology first developed with prior NSF MRI funding; however, it was not yet a viable technology. Phase 3 was the development of software libraries: OmegaLib is the 3D middleware that controls image placement on the display; Omicron is the user-interaction library; and, OmegaSound is the audio library. This work is ongoing, as these libraries were initially designed to be compatible with all EVL-developed instrumentation, though the focus has transitioned from OmegaDesk to the NSF MRI-funded CAVE2 environment. Several unique applications were developed for OmegaDesk to make use of its various modes of operation. In "fully immersive mode," both displays are 3D, which is ideal for applications that require navigation through virtual space or that require the user to manipulate close-up 3D objects. In "3D viewer mode," the top display is 3D and the bottom screen is 2D, enabling viewers to see 3D objects while interacting with 2D controls. The reverse, a 2D vertical display and 3D horizontal display, represents "'bathtub' mode," in which viewers look down to see 3D data, like looking at a fish tank from above, and look at the vertical display to see 2D projections or slices of the data. Last, if both displays are 2D, this is "touch augmented desktop/cubicle mode," where the vertical display is a virtual cubicle wall and the horizontal display is like a giant iPad where document editing and manipulation can be performed. Potential uses range from scientific visualization of complex scientific datasets, interaction with dynamic geospatial information, analysis of medical data for research or surgery planning, and scenarios where a 3D, qualitative display of information can be enriched by a 2D quantitative view of the same information. INTELLECTUAL MERIT. OmegaDesk has the potential to facilitate large-scale collaborations requiring advanced cyberinfrastructure and, more importantly, to transform scientific workflows by providing new and more intuitive ways of interacting with information. In addition to enhancing the ability of domain scientists to explore, manipulate and analyze data, this instrument also provides new opportunities in computer science research, in fields such as human-computer interaction, virtual reality, computer graphics, high-performance computing, high-speed networking, and computer-supported cooperative work. BROADER IMPACTS. This MRI has enabled the development of state-of-the-art instrumentation and opportunities to enhance undergraduate and graduate education; to provide scientific communities with highly integrated virtual-reality collaboration environments; and, to continue ongoing partnerships with many of the world’s best domain scientists and computer scientists in academia and industry, who readily become early adopters. And, clearly, society also benefits, as these researchers are working to understand and solve complex environmental, medical and economic issues, to name a few.
