Virtual people help bridge digital divide
August 1, 2002
Web-based avatars are being developed in the U.K. as a simplified interface to computer systems that inform citizens about services.
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Imperial College, a partner to St Mary’s Hospital, has purchased a £60,000 touchscreen “operating table” that could represent the future for teaching would-be doctors about anatomy and for preparing for real-life operations.
The same length and size as a normal operating table, a “cadaver” on the screen is a virtual body created using a mix of graphics and real CT scans of the body.
Students and surgeons can interact… read more
Virtual nanoscopy: like ‘Google Earth’ for cell biologists
August 8, 2012
Just as users of Google Earth can zoom in from space to a view of their own backyard, researchers can now navigate biological tissues from a whole embryo down to its subcellular structures thanks to recent advances in electron microscopy and image processing.
An upgrade to the JCB DataViewer, browser-based image presentation tool from the the Journal of Cell Biology (JCB), now also makes these data publicly accessible for exploration and… read more
Virtual music school becomes a reality
March 30, 2009
Students of popular musical instruments may soon be learning to play with the help of a new generation of intelligent, interactive computer programs.
‘Virtual’ mouse brains now available online
July 10, 2007
A multi-institutional consortium including Duke University has created startlingly crisp 3-D microscopic views of tiny mouse brains — unveiled layer by layer — by extending the capabilities of conventional magnetic resonance imaging to create images more than 100,000 times higher resolution than a clinical MRI scan.
High resolution magnetic resonance imaging — which the researchers call “MRI histology” — provides distortion-free 3-D images with superb ability to… read more
VIRTUAL MOON TRIP COMING UP
June 6, 2007
Imagine hitching a ride to the moon on a pint-sized space probe — and experiencing every high point of the flight in real time, thanks to virtual-reality technology, according to Pete Worden, the director of NASA’s Ames Research Center.
“For example, I can imagine a future robotic mission to the moon where we can all walk or fly along with the lunar rover as it makes its way over… read more
Virtual Maps for the Blind
April 9, 2007
Researchers in Greece have developed a new system that converts video into virtual, touchable maps for the blind.
The software tracks each structure and determines its shape and location. That data is used to create a three-dimensional grid of force fields for each structure. Two common-touch interfaces simulate the force fields by applying pressure to the user’s hand: the CyberGrasp glove, which pulls on individual fingers, and the Phantom… read more
Virtual maps for the blind
September 14, 2009
BlindAid, a virtual “”white cane” system that allows the blind to explore the world around them using a 3-D haptic device (a joystick that allows them to “feel” the world — it stiffens when the user meets a virtual wall or barrier, for example) has been developed by researchers at Tel Aviv University and MIT.
Virtual Iraq
May 12, 2008
The Department of Defense is testing Virtual Iraq, a virtual-reality program for treating post-traumatic stress disorder.
A virtual musical instrument capable of creating sounds not possible in the physical world has been developed Professor David Howard, Head of the Music Technology Group at York University, according to BBC News.
Cymatic is both a physical modelling sound synthesis environment and a musical instrument. It has a 3D user interface for the construction of virtual instruments that can be played with the aid… read more
Virtual Immortality for Virtual Eternity
June 12, 2007
The National Science Foundation has awarded a half-million-dollar grant to the universities of Central Florida at Orlando and Illinois at Chicago to explore how researchers might use artificial intelligence, archiving, and computer imaging to create convincing, digital versions of real people, a possible first step toward virtual immortality.
Virtual Humans Proposed As Space Travelers
September 2, 2004
A partnership between in-the-flesh space voyagers and virtual humans may make sense for a humans-to-Mars mission and other manned space exploration, says author Peter Plantec.
A virtual human could be set up to monitor highly complex systems in real time. It can interface with the human sojourner, easing that person’s workload, Plantec advised, by monitoring onboard systems and automatically make whatever critical adjustments it has been authorized to do.
Virtual humans edge closer
July 30, 2003
Avatars seem to be getting ever more lifelike, with more realistic visual appearance, speech, and body motion.
But as an avatar approaches reality, it could fall into the “Zombie Zone,” in which expectations that a character is actually human are suddently “violated by something that slightly wrong in the voice, or the face, or in the way it moves, and it gives you a horrible feeling that is not… read more
Virtual hand gets under the skin
August 15, 2008
Amazingly realistic new animations of the human hand are detailed enough to shed light on the mystery of how the tendons and muscles of the human hand interact when we move, and should help surgeons reconstruct damaged hands more effectively.
University of British Columbia animators used anatomical data from medical images to create a physics model of the 17 bones and 54 tendons and muscles of the… read more
Virtual Eve: first in human computer interaction
November 20, 2007
A near-human virtual teacher called Eve can tell if a child is frustrated, angry or confused by an on-screen teaching session and can adapt the tutoring session appropriately.
With a human-sounding voice, Eve can ask questions, give feedback, discuss questions and solutions and show emotion. To develop the software, the Massey University researchers observed children and their interactions with teachers and captured them on thousands of images.… read more