Conceptual Modelling of Articulated Bodies in Virtual Environments Virtual Environments

Abstract. Today, the design of a Virtual Reality (VR) application is still a specialized and a time consuming task. Most techniques and software tools require considerable knowledge of VR technology, programming skills and/or knowledge about script languages. This limits the participation of non VR-experts in the design and development of a VR application considerably. For this reason, we have developed an approach called “VR-WISE ” that allows specifying a VR application at a conceptual level (free from implementation details) and from the viewpoint of a domain expert, allowing nonVR-experts to participate in the design of a Virtual Environment. This may shorten the development process and facilitate the communication. Our approach uses ontologies, incorporating domain knowledge, and high-level modeling concepts for describing the Virtual Environment. In this paper, we explain how articulated bodies can be modeled at a conceptual level by connecting objects using conceptual modeling primitives. We will present the different modeling concepts for connections and the associated constraints and illustrate this with examples