Rendering Techniques for Scientific Visualization
1
J. Fritz
Master's thesis, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Delaware, December, 1996.
1996 Delaware
http://www.asel.udel.edu/sem/papers/jason/thesisdir/fritzthesis.ps.gz
Scientific visualization is a technique used to explore scientific
data by representing it in a form more suitable for human
comprehension. Typically this form is visual since vision is the best
human sense to use for perception of information. However, people who
are blind or visually impaired must rely on other senses to accomplish
this perception. Haptic interface technology makes digital information
tangible, which can provide an additional medium for data exploration
and analysis, especially since touch is the only bi-directional
modality. Unfortunately, the amount of information that can be
perceived through touch is orders of magnitude less than that of
vision, so a haptic environment must be enhanced to aid the
comprehension of the display. This enhancement includes speech output
and the addition of object properties such as friction and
texture. Textures are generated which can be modified according to a
characteristic or property of the object to which it is
applied. Through a software library, algorithms for representing data
are developed in this thesis with the goal of providing a haptic
visualization system without the need for a visual component.