Going Virtual
Opening boxes is part of the job for assistant professor Sharon
Stansfield, mathematics and computer science, and her students
as they set up a virtual reality lab in Williams Hall. The lab
will support interdisciplinary research in computational science,
neuroscience, and occupational science education, therapy, and
assessment. Stansfield and collaborators Kinsuk Maitra and Carole
Dennis, assistant professors of occupational therapy, have received
a $190,000 National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation
Program grant along with matching funds from the College for the
lab.
 Sharon
Stansfield and computer science students in the new
VR lab, from left to right: Murillo Soranso '02, Tania Ali '02,
Stansfield, David Mayer '02, and Schleifer. Photo by Elizabeth
Lawson.
Investigations are already under way. Says Stansfield, "This
semester, in collaboration with Carole Dennis, I'm supervising
two VR projects for seniors majoring in computer science. In one,
students are exploring the standard virtual human and developing
behaviors, such as restricted limb movements, for a virtual patient
in need of therapy. In the other, seniors are attempting to develop
a simple VR game that could be part of the therapy for children
with movement disorders." Each project will necessitate sophisticated
computer science research to create virtual humans, shared VR,
and neural networks. Some of the terminology is hard for the nonvirtual
to understand, but Stansfield can interpret: "What is 'shared
VR'? It means more than one user can participate in the VR environment
at the same time. That's important for team training, for instructor
participation, etc. The shared-VR software my team developed at
Sandia National Labs when I was on staff there will be used for
the VR work here." Stansfield is excited about the virtual projects
for occupational science and neuroscience: "Virtual humans are
an important part of VR. For example, people who are training
to be medics might treat a virtual patient. Right now, computer
scientists are trying to make virtual humans move and perform
higher-level tasks more realistically."
 This
virtual terminal, a gybrid of the terminals in the Ithaca and
Albuquerque airports, is part of the software being developed
in the VR lab.
Senior Ian Schleifer is working in the VR lab on software that
will interface the display on a computer monitor with motion trackers,
which respond to the actions of the users. "Some children with
cerebral palsy have a condition called hemiplegia, a motor deficit
on one side of the body. The children learn to do pretty much
everything with the functional side of their bodies. So we're
designing virtual reality games that challenge these children
to use their underused limbs." Schleifer thinks the uses of virtual
reality are many and there is nothing to fear as things go virtual:
"I believe that as the underlying technologies for displays, motion
tracking, graphics processing, etc. become more advanced, more
and more of the applications will become commonplace. For example,
virtual reality is an invaluable teaching tool, because it can
be used to visualize things normally beyond the range of human
experience. If one understands how virtual reality works, there's
not much to be afraid of. It won't swallow you whole like in the
horror film The Lawnmower Man." Good!
Stansfield, Dennis, and Maitra hope other faculty will use the
lab for their own research projects. They intend to seek additional
funding to support what they anticipate will be a dynamic, long-term
interdisciplinary endeavor. As Stansfield and her students showed
their nonvirtual visitor the unboxed instrumentation and demonstrated
a virtual setting in process of construction, they were unanimous
in commenting on one of the chief delights of computer science:
"It's all about problem solving." |
