Bouncing Off The Walls

Guest post from Cara Bonnett, Office of Information Technology

No, it’s not your imagination: Those clouds really are following you, and the sunflowers are waving.

Students walking past the huge media wall at the Link in Perkins Library may not realize that the tiled display is responding to their movements. But thanks to Duke researchers and computer science students, they now can interact with the wall to play with the weather, generate their own poetry and navigate through a collection of ultra-high-resolution “gigapixel” images.

“The challenge is getting people to notice that the display is interactive,” said Robert Duvall, a computer science professor whose students designed the weather simulation. “How do you draw people in, help them understand what’s going on and get them playing with it?”

The media wall – built by Duke’s Visualization Technology Group as part of the Visual Studies Initiative – includes 48 computer screens, six Web cameras and a set of directional speakers, all driven by a 104-core computing cluster. The cameras, positioned on the ceiling, are programmed to detect viewers’ positions or movements and use that data to determine what’s represented on the screen.

Students in Duvall’s advanced graphics class designed the weather simulation to be useful as well as fun. The display, based on real-time data from an online weather site, features cartoonish rainclouds or clear blue skies (depending on the forecast), with sunflowers that “wave” when a viewer steps up to the screen.

“After you’ve been in the Link for a couple hours, you might not know what the weather’s like outside,” Duvall said. “On the wall you can see it at a glance.”



Another display – “Passage Sets,” created by visual studies professor Bill Seaman and programmed by research associate Todd Berreth – includes an interactive poem generator that allows as many as four viewers at a time to choose words or phrases from four lists that then flow in a line of text across the bottom of the screen. An opening for the exhibit will be held Friday, April 16.

Berreth and a committee of faculty, staff and students are seeking new ideas for exhibits on the wall. Students in future classes could help with the programming, and developers can test their programs on a smaller-scale version of the wall at Smith Warehouse.

The only caveat: No marketing allowed.

Faculty and students are invited to submit project ideas to Berreth’s group at mediawall@duke.edu. Find out more information about developing projects for the Link media wall on the group’s wiki.

Move Around Inside the Web

Guest Post from Cara Bonnett of Duke's Office of Information Technology:

Instead of clicking through a series of hyperlinked websites, imagine moving through a three-dimensional Web of interconnected virtual worlds.

That’s the idea behind OpenCobalt, a toolkit of open-source software in development at Duke.

The free toolkit allows developers to build and share their own virtual 3-D environments, interacting in real time via video and voice, with collaborative access to Web browsers, 3-D models and documents.

The current 2-D Web interface – a collection of hypertext “pages” on a “desktop” – was designed primarily for sharing text and simple graphics, not for facilitating deeper kinds of social interaction, according to Duke researcher Julian Lombardi, who demonstrated the OpenCobalt technology at Duke’s biweekly Tech and New Media Tuesday forum.



“Wonderful stuff can happen when you move away from the page metaphor,” said Lombardi, one of OpenCobalt’s architects and assistant vice president of Duke’s Office of Information Technology. “We’re living in a 3-D world. We need to interact with each other and with information in 3-D spaces.”

Commercial vendors of today’s virtual worlds – from Second Life to World of Warcraft – offer “walled garden” services, much as AOL, CompuServe and other Internet service providers did in the 1990s, with little incentive to leverage open community standards, Lombardi said.

Built using the earlier open-source Croquet platform, OpenCobalt provides a way to easily create and connect virtual worlds. It works on all platforms and relies on peer-to-peer architecture that doesn’t require dedicated servers.

In his demonstration, Lombardi used the technology to quickly create a virtual workspace, adding 3-D models, audio and video files, then moved into another virtual space created by one of his collaborators in California.

The OpenCobalt project – funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and two awards from the National Science Foundation – aims to build a viable, scalable infrastructure that supports the needs of education and research.

Developers can learn more about the project and download OpenCobalt at http://www.duke.edu/~julian/Cobalt/Home.html.

"Emergence" Wages Peace, Not War, After Droid Revolt

(image: C Emergence game project, 2009/Philip Lin)

It’s the 22^nd century, and future generations have built vast numbers of artificial androids to alleviate worldwide labor problems and global economic crises.

In the process, these “arties” have created a sophisticated world of beautifully surreal, well-constructed and environmentally advanced buildings under the control of a computer network.

But a design flaw suddenly causes all the androids to rebel and unleash a rapidly-unfolding chemical, biological and nuclear holocaust that destroys much of the civilization and the humans in it. Then the cyborg-perpetrators seemingly disappear, leaving it to competing factions of rogue scientists, genetically modified settlers, compu-mobsters, ex-military and others to pick up the pieces.

That may sound like a prescription for the mother of online war games. But a Duke collaboration in the arts and sciences is crafting what it's creators call "the first massively multiplayer online game that encourages diplomacy and social cooperation over violence."

Image: C Emergence game project, 2009/Takayoshi Sato

Tim Lenoir, the Kimberly Jenkins Chair for New Technologies and Society, Casey Alt, Visiting Professor of the Practice in Art, Art History and Visual Studies, graduate student Patrick Jagoda and undergraduates Harrison Lee, Lucas Best and Brent Sodman are building "Emergence," a video game designed to be played by thousands at a time.

Under construction with outside help from Virtual Heroes of Durham, an "advanced learning technology company" based in Research Triangle Park. Emergence is intended to simultaneously provide epic entertainment and practical instruction in the art of peacemaking and conflict resolution.

"Simulation is a fantastic tool," said Lenoir during a Duke Information Science + Information Studies (ISIS) Program Tech and New Media talk Oct 13 at the John Hope Franklin Center. Instead of teaching students to read and memorize texts, "why not turn it into a game environment?" As Lenoir and others spoke, a screen displayed prototype "Emergence" illustrations such lavish android-made architecture, after-the-revolt smoking city ruins, and some of the player avatars who must reclaim war torn zones.

"Emergence" is a successor to "Virtual Conflict Resolution: Turning Swords to Ploughshares," a previous effort to turn an existing military simulation into a humanitarian assistance game that won a $238,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation for digital media and learning.

That effort involved a collaboration between Lenoir, Natalia Mirovitskaya, a senior research scholar at Duke's Center for International Development, and university computer scientists, film, video and digital scholars.

Image: C Emergence game project, 2009/Takayoshi Sato

Snakes and Spiders in the Apartment, Yiiii!

Even humans who aren't naturally phobic about spiders and snakes can be provoked into a certain "fear avoidance" towards them, tests in a Duke Department of Psychology and Neuroscience laboratory show. But, just one day later, most of those bad "contextual" memories seem to dissipate, unless...!

Unless those memories are formed in the Duke Immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE), the university's six-sided "virtual reality" theater. Seeing "virtual" snakes and spiders in a computer-created DiVE setting somehow gives the experience more staying power than does a more-mundane lab setting, Duke postdoctoral researcher Nicole Huff reported at the final Spring 2009 Visualization Friday Forum held on April 24 at Duke's Computer Science Department.

Immersive experiences "may engage brains more intensely than a normal laboratory study," Huff said. "Could DiVE be too real?"

The continuing experiments' purpose is to test how and for how long the human brain stores memories of a disturbing experience in a particular place -- in this case seeing images of snakes and spiders.

Huff and her faculty advisor, associate professor Kevin LaBar, conducted initial investigations in a sparse laboratory cubicle or in a fancier room at Duke's Levine Science Research Center. People saw 2-D computer images of real open jawed rattlesnakes and lurking tarantulas, partially reinforced with a mild electrical wrist stimulation designed to be annoying.

Those experiences created a sense of "fear," measured as extra sweat on their skin. But just 24 hours later, test subjects returning to the same lab settings to see those images again (but without any new shocking) had lost most of that fear.

People undergoing similar tests in the DiVE had their initial three-dimensional encounters with cyber creatures amid a pleasant and realistic faux suburban setting -- either a series of indoor apartment rooms or an outdoor yard.

Though computer created, these "snakes" emit realistic rattling noises while "spiders" send out crustacean-like scuttling sounds. Those first encounters are again reinforced with mild electroshocks.

On the second day, these DiVE subjects will express the same "strong fear," Huff said, if they see and hear virtual spiders and snakes again, even though there is no additional electrical shocking. "There is a huge difference," she added.

However, people having their initial bad experiences in the apartment's living room and kitchen don't have similar bad memories if they next see spiders and snakes in the yard -- and vice versa. While the studies continue, Huff thinks the virtual experience may engage the brain in a different way.

Science Education Goes Virtual

Friday’s Visualization Forum featured former Duke students David McMullen and Marcel Yang unveiling their innovative virtual-reality learning tool for teaching how alcohol is absorbed by the body. The project is an independent study with Duke professors Rochelle Schwartz-Bloom and Rachael Brady. Aimed toward college students, the program utilizes Duke’s Immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE) to give an acute spatial understanding of the chemical processes that take place.

Calm, voice-of-God narration describes the different stages of alcohol absorption and the enzyme mechanisms involved. The program also discusses genetic variation and differing levels of susceptibility to alcoholism.

To get students engaged, the program has a fair amount of interactivity built in. Students observe chemical reactions and then are given the chance to recreate them, using a wand to direct placement of molecules and enzymes. The narration guides student’s actions, gently instructing them when they don’t fit the pieces together correctly.

There are many benefits to learning in such a hands-on environment. However, McMullen and Yang admit that many distractions are present as well, especially for users who have never experienced DiVE before.

“You’ll get people’s attention when they’re in there -- but focused on what?” McMullen said.

Schwartz-Bloom said she noticed some students gazing all around the room during the demonstration, and not paying attention to instruction. Certainly, this is a challenge the researchers hope to overcome.

As part of their research, McMullen and Yang had to evaluate the relative success of their program compared to other learning methods (PC version of the program or a paper handout). They found that DiVE had an advantage in some areas. However, they also discovered some flaws in the design of the experiment and are in the process of correcting them.

In the future, they plan to establish more valid achievement assessments and to test whether DiVE aids in long term retention of details and concepts. The team is working hard to prepare for the Visualization Challenge, May 1.

A computer-based version of the program was created to make it more widely accessible. The software will be available on the internet soon for public use.

EPA facility measures air pollution with scale models

Becca Writes:

Last week I visited the NOAA / EPA Fluid Modeling Facility with my Focus Program group. The purpose of this facility is to better understand atmospheric dispersion of pollutants. For that reason, the scientists at the FMF build huge scale models of buildings, towns, and cities to evaluate atmospheric dispersion under very specific conditions. They place a model in a large wind tunnel machine, a device that simulates air currents in the atmosphere. Theatrical smoke is emitted at a certain point, and its dispersion through the wind tunnel is measured and analyzed.

We observed an experiment designed to test how air pollutants disperse from highways, specifically, a highway outside Las Vegas that cuts underneath a railroad track. To better demonstrate the flow of air, the lights were turned off and a laser was pointed at the point of release. This allowed us to see the many swirls and eddies of the dispersing pollution.



Interestingly, by adding a high-rise building to the immediate left of the highway, the air flow dynamic changed and pollutants were stirred up much more. One can obviously see the benefits of this type of modeling in determining the dispersion of pollutants.

Is this the real life, or is this just fantasy?

Last week, as part of the Triangle Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series, William Swartout of Institute of Creative Technologies(ICT), USC was invited to Duke to deliver a talk on 'Toward the Holodeck: Integrating Graphics, Artificial Intelligence, Entertainment and Learning'. Inspired by the virtual worlds presented in Star Trek, William Swartout and the ICT are conducting research and developing virtual scenarios that contain a close knit connection between graphics, sounds and circumstances, so that man can react to them as if they are in the real world.

In simple words, the ultimate goal is to achieve the Holodeck.

The whole project is an extension of the concept of virtual reality, that has already achieved advanced stages. An example where such a technology can be tremendously useful is in the training of army personnel. A virtual world mimicing a real world scenario can be recreated, and the personnel can play out the whole situation in this simulated environment. This is refered to as the Mission Rehearsal Exercise (MRE), and helps in facilitation of new techniques of survival, defense or attack in the virtual environment, so that one is fully prepared incase of a similar circumstance in reality. The method to make MRE a success is called as a hybrid approach, which involves already scripted and simulated characters, an artifical intelligence with emotional model, as well as a Text-To-Speech (TTS) system. The simulated characters are programmed to be triggered by certain commands and behaviors. The AI helps the simulation to respond in real-time to the actions of the user, and the emotion part adds a tinge of humane touch to it. And the TTS system is used to act as the direct medium of communication.

Apart from the sophisticated visual, audio and character model, this simulated model also takes a content based story approach. Hence the user feels like he is living in the present, and has been allocated certain specified tasks that will enable him to proceed further in the story. This is an excellent advanced platform that will help elevate the methods of physical training, and expanded to include all sorts of social and emotional environments. For example, here is a small video of Duke University graduate student Gil Bohrer interacting with a virtual forest he created:







Another breakthrough in the field of vitual reality was the development of the omni-directional treadmill (ODT), which allows a person to move in all directions. Their creation and further development was essential as they are utilized to ensure an uninterrupted and close to real locomotive motion in virtual reality environments.

What these experiments prove is this is the age of not just innovation in a particular field or subject. It is the age of strategically integrating research conducted in varied fields and model them to meet the needs and aspiration of today's society. This kind of interdisciplinary approach will provide the answer to life,universe and everything, and the answer is definitely not as easy as 42.