Essay About Virtual Reality And Artificial Reality Technology

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Proceedings of the 1998 Winter Simulation Conference
D.J. Medeiros, E.F. Watson, J.S. Carson and M.S. Manivannan, eds.
SIMULATION MODELING WITH ARTIFICIAL REALITY TECHNOLOGY (SMART): AN INTEGRATION OF
VIRTUAL REALITY AND SIMULATION MODELING
Hank Grant
School of Industrial Engineering
The University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK 73019-1016, U.S.A.
Chuen-Ki Lai
The SABRE Group
4200 Buckingham Rd
Fort Worth TX 76155, U.S.A.
ABSTRACT
Simulation Modeling with Artificial Reality Technology
(SMART) is a simulation modeling tool that provides a
virtual reality interface for building graphical simulation
models. The simulation models, comprised of nodes and
arcs, are constructed in three dimensions. As the user
builds a model, he may immerse himself in it using virtual
reality hardware and software tools and take advantage of
the three dimensional environment provided by SMART.
Models built using SMART can be exported to AweSim,
and simulated as SLAM models (Pristker et al, 1996). The
virtual reality hardware includes an electronic glove and
head-mounted display. The specific hardware is the 5DT
Glove (Fifth Dimension Technologies, 1996) and VIO IGlasses
(Virtual I-O, 1995), respectively.
By wearing the 5DT Glove, the user can navigate
through virtual space and manipulate a three dimensional
simulation model. The VIO I-Glasses allows the user to
experience immersion in the virtual modeling world. The
head-mounted device constantly responds to the motions of
the users head to reflect changes in his view of the virtual
world. With SMART, simulation practitioners are no
longer restricted to building simulation models on a flat
two dimensional space. Rather, they can now build three
dimensional simulation models with high non-planar
complexity through the virtual reality interface provided by
SMART.
1 INTRODUCTION
Virtual reality has been explored for several years.
One of its initial pioneers was Jaron Lanier who developed
many of its basic concepts (Porter, 1992). Due to the
decreasing cost and increasing power of computers, virtual
reality is being implemented by many industries such as
aviation (Longhurst, 1995), medical (Hollands et al, 1996),
and manufacturing (Expert System, 1995) to address key
areas like training, design, and testing. The three
dimensional visualization capability of virtual reality is the
primary reason why this advanced technology is becoming
the interface of the future for computing. The software
system, SMART has been developed to explore the use of
virtual reality in building simulation models. SMART also
serves as a prototype for testing the feasibility of creating a
virtual reality simulation modeling software system on a
relatively low-cost personal computer (PC).
The simulation models built by SMART can be
exported and then simulated by AweSim as SLAM models
to analyze systems. AweSim is a general purpose
simulation tool developed by Pristker Corporation
(Pritsker, 1996). AweSim and SLAM were chosen for this
research but the concepts of SMART may be implemented
to build any network based simulation model. The
minimum system configuration for SMART is a Pentium
200 MHz processor with 32 Mbytes of RAM and 8
Mbytes of video memory.
2 VIRTUAL REALITY HARDWARE
SMART offers a three dimensional interface using virtual
reality hardware which includes an electronic glove and
head-mounted display. Manufactured by the Fifth
Dimension Technologies, the electronic glove is known as
the 5DT Glove. The head-mounted display is called the
VIO I-Glasses and it is manufactured by Virtual I-O.
2.1 DT Glove
The 5DT Glove is used by SMART as the primary
manual input device. The electronic glove is plugged into
a PCs serial port. The configuration parameters of the
5DT Glove such as the bending angle of each finger and,
pitch and roll of the wrist are constantly sampled by the
PCs serial connection and sent to SMART for processing.
The user controls SMART using a set of gestures to cause