Tutorial: H3D/VHTK

Duration: Half-day

Organizer
Mark Dixon, SenseGraphics AB

Contact:
Mark Dixon
Isafjordsgatan 22 C5
E-mail: Mark.Dixon@sensegraphics.com
Tel.: + 46 707 788412
Fax: + 46 751 6062

Lecturers
Mark Dixon, SenseGraphics AB
Mark has more than 8 years of experience with haptics, working for CSIRO in Australia before joining Reachin Technologies early 1998. There Mark was responsible for design and development of the Reachin API. Mark now works for SenseGraphicsAB, building up the open-source API, H3D.

Karljohan Lundin, Linkoping University, Sweden
Karljohan received his Master of Science in Media Technology and Engineering in 2001, with specialization in Visualization. He has since done research on volume haptics, lately in colaboration with SenseGraphics AB. Parts of the latest results have been used to create the foundation of the Volume Haptics Toolkit.

Summary
This workshop covers introductory material as well as concrete examples to show the power and flexibility of H3D API and the Volume Haptics Toolkit (VHTK). H3D API is an open-source, cross-platform API designed for software development of hapto-visual applications. H3D is based on the X3D standard and ties together OpenHaptics and OpenGL in an easy to use rapid development environment.

VHTK is an extension of H3D into the domain of volume haptics. It provides a framework for reading and handling volumetric data, visualizing the data and generating advanced haptic feedback providing guidance and material information about the data.

Intended audience
The first half of the workshop is devoted to a high-level introduction to H3D API and the target audience are software developers interested in learning about the capabilities of H3D. Some basic programming knowledge is assumed.

The second half of the workshop is aimed at developers working with volumetric data exploration who want to add haptic feedback to guide the user or present non-visual information using the Volume Haptics Toolkit. Some programming knowledge is assumed.

Schedule

• H3D API, Mark Dixon, 115 minutes
  • Introduction to H3D, 15 min
    • What is H3D API?
    • Who should use H3D API and when?
    • www.h3d.org
  • Writing X3D scenegraphs, 25 min
    • X3D nodes
    • X3D file format
    • VRML?
  • Adding Python scripting to X3D, 30 min
    • Writing Fields in Python
    • Scene-graph manipulation from Python
  • Examples of applications in H3D, 20 min
    • Temporal bone drilling
    • Segmentation of volumetric data
    • Needle insertion
    • Games for rehabilitation
  • Writing a haptic game in H3D, 25 min
    • A short examination of a simple haptic game built using H3D API.
• Break, 15m
• VHTK, Karljohan Lundin, 95 minutes
  • Introduction to VHTK, 30 min
    • introduction to volume haptics
    • VHTK and volume haptics
    • haptic primitives, their functionality and role
    • VHTK basic structure - visualization components, haptic components, volume data loading and filtering, and transfer functions
  • Using and writing haptic modes, 25 min
    • the VHTK definition of a haptic mode
    • modes available in VHTK
    • chosing the right mode to use
    • designing new haptic modes
  • Connecting VHTK to a user interface, 20 min
    • event handling in VHTK
    • lazy evaluation and keeping data up-to-date
    • TCL/Tk example
    • H3D UI example
  • Full multi modal visualization example, 20 min
    • using the building blocks of VHTK
    • transforms to navigate
    • visualization parameters
    • adding haptic interaction