Design Development

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A TACTILE MODELING INTERFACE

WEN-YEN TANG

Graduate Institute of Architecture

Tainan National University of Art

** *****, ********, ******, ***, TAIWAN

Email address: ********@****.***.**

AND

SHENG-KAI TANG

Graduate School of Architecture

Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh, PA, 15232, USA

Email address: ********@***.***

1. Introduction

Recently, more and more researchers dedicated in the development of human

computer interaction for CAD systems, such as gestural input of three

dimensional coordinates (Lee, Hu, and Selker, 2005), flexible manipulation

of NURBS objects (Cohen, Markosian, Zeleznik, Hughes, and Barzel, 1999;

Emmerik, 1990), and the creation of force feedback (Wu, 2003). These

research results indicated that the more intuitive control the device can

provide in modeling process, the more creative solutions can be generated

(Lee, Hu, and Selker, 2005; Schweikardt and Gross, 2000; Wu, 2003).

2. Problem and Objective

Based on what mention above, the problems of this research are that

what kind of interactions with computer is necessary for designer

while modeling? How to develop an intuitive modeling interface that

fulfills the criteria generated by previous question?

The objective of this research is to develop a tactile modeling interface by

which designer could create three dimensional models as freely as playing

with clay. In order to achieve this goal, there are four main questions to be

discussed:

1. What are the behaviors in the process of making physical models?

2. How to extract key behaviors that could be further implemented?

3. What kind of technology could be used to implement?

4. How to evaluate the usability of the interface and to ascertain the

validity of this research?

2 WEN-YEN TANG AND SHENG-KAI TANG

3. Methodology and Steps

In order to discover answers for the questions mention above, there are four

main steps in this research:

1. Recording the modeling behaviors through empirical experiments.

2. Analyzing the recorded behaviors through coding schemes

3. Implementing the analyzed results through electronic technology

4. Evaluating the implemented interface through interview

4. Results

First, after analyzing the data generated by the empirical experiment,

we find out that the actions of squeeze, push and pare are the

most frequent actions when modelling. Second, the combinations of

sensors and micro-pump balloon not only provide modeller a feel but

also generate a shape as the same as the clay. Third, the virtual objects

which are connected to the digital signals generated by sensors give

the modeller real time feedbacks which are very crucial in the seeing-

moving-seeing design process.

5. Future Study

In this paper, we find out some basic phenomena that can be used as

base for developing the tactile modelling interface. However, because

we have only a few subjects with background of sculpture design in

the empirical experiment, the results of the experiment might not

represent all the typical actions of modellers. Future more, we only

pick three actions as our target to implement in the device so that this

device might not fulfill all required actions when using hand to

modelling. Third, in the Virtool application, we only use surface as

our type of virtual clay, but there are many other types of clay such as

cube, sphere and cylinder which might have better performance than

the surface. These three obstacles will be the future study in our

development of second version.

References

Cohen, J. M., Markosian, L., Zeleznik, R. C., Hughes, J. F. and Barzel, R.: 1999, An Interface

for Sketching 3D Curves, ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, pp. 17-22 (April

1999). ACM SIGGRAPH.

Emmerik, M. J.G. M.: 1990, Interactive design of parameterized 3D models by direct

manipulation, Delft University of Technology.

Lee, C. H., Hu Y. C. and Selker, T.: 2005, iSphere: A Proximity-based 3D Input Interface,

Computer Aided Architectural Design Futures 2005 [Proceedings of the 10th

International Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Futures / ISBN 1-

4020-3460-1] Vienna (Austria) 20 22 June 2005, pp. 281-290.

Schweikardt, E. and Gross, M. D.: 2000, Digital clay: deriving digital models from freehand

sketches. Automation in Construction, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 107-115.

Wu, Y. L.: 2003, A Digital Modeling Environment Creating Physical Characteristics,

CAADRIA 03, Thailand, pp. 385-391.

Contact this candidate