Articulating human hands and manipulating objects in virtual environments

This thesis research addresses the problem of human representation in virtual environments (VE). Previous work done on Virtual Reality (ESOPE-RV) lacks an interface to produce dynamic, real-time interactive simulated human representation.The goal of this research was to create the McGill Virtual Operator as a stand alone, independent software application interfacing the Human Operator with various synthetic worlds. For the lower body, including the feet we use pedals to perform the navigation in VE giving a locomotive motion which is simple and acceptable. However, the upper body motion and especially the human hand articulation is much more complex because humans interact with the environment largely with their hands. The approach taken in this thesis is to develop an interactive interface which achieves dynamic real-time hand manipulation while not encumbering the user.The interface is based on two inexpensive data gloves and commercially available six degree of freedom sonar sensor technology and various routines and kinematics algorithms. The result of this work is the creation of a human body interface focused on hand manipulation as a McGill Virtual Operator which can be incorporated for use in any large-scale interactive VE. Ultrasonic sensors are strapped onto each arm of the user, to read their position and orientation. The motion of the fingers is recorded by the data gloves and the information is transmitted to software, which in turn replicates the same motion of the computer human hands in real-time. Experiments were carried out using a collection of fourteen tools designed for the WITS training environment. The performance results of these interactive extensions to the VR environment was evaluated and found to be satisfactory. (Abstract shortened by UMI.