DesignSpace

Project Sponsors, Equipment, and Technologies.

Center for Design Research
Stanford University

Without the following technologies and the generous support of the respective companies, DesignSpace would be only an imagination.

Index by company:

• Crystal River Engineering, Inc., Palo Alto, CA
• Division Ltd., Bristol, England
• Fakespace Labs Inc., Menlo Park, CA
• Polhemus Navigation, Colhester, VT
• Sharp Electronics, Cupertino, CA
• Virtual Technologies, Palo Alto, CA

Index by technology:

• virtual acoustics and 3D audio
• interactive image generation
• telepresent stereo viewer
• 6D tracking
• large flat panel image displays
• hand instrumentation and gesture recognition

Crystal River Engineering, Inc.

Groveland, CA
(209) 962-6382
(209) 962-4873 fax
info@cre.com

The CRE Acoustetron is an audio spatialization server, specifically designed for complex simulations and virtual environments. The standalone server comes in a variety of configurations tailored to the simulation needs and coprocesses audio in realtime from monaural sound sources into a binaural stimulus. DesignSpace uses a full acoustic model with first order reverberation to accurately spatialize sound events in the virtual space. Localized audio is essential for effective virtual conferencing as in the remote collaboration facilitated by DesignSpace.

DesignSpace also frequently uses CRE's other 3D audio products, the Beachtron and the Convolvotron, for development and demonstrations that do not necessitate simulating a full acoustic environment.

Fakespace Labs, Inc.

The FSL BOOM is a Binoccular, Omni-Orientational Monitor, which simply means that it is an interactive, high resolution, stereo visualization tool that may conveniently hover over a designer's desk and be a looking glass into the model space. Although the DesignSpace concept system emphasizes passive, far field fixed plane projections, the BOOM works really well towards DesignSpace's objectives. The BOOM compliments DesignSpace fixed plane projection by providing near-field, stereographic detail viewing upon demand, without encumbering the designer. The BOOM is designed with counter-balanced links pivoting through ball-bearing joints and self-tracking through the use of high-resolution optical encoders.

Virtual Technologies

The Virtex Cyberglove is a hand instrumentation device, which reports up to 22 joint angles in high fidelity (good angular/temporal resolution and repeatability). The device was designed specifically to maximize differentiation in hand formations or poses that may be used as gestures for computer recognition. The Cyberglove is an excellent controller for a dynamic geometric hand model or anthrometric robot hands. Since dexterous manipulation is fundamental to DesignSpace, the Cyberglove has become its centerpiece.

Division, Ltd.

400 Seaport Ct., Suite 101
Redwood City, CA 94063
(415) 364-6067
(415) 364-4663 fax
info@division.com

The Division dView realtime 3D image generation system is a flexible, yet fast, pipelined single board component for personal computers. An Intel i860 RISC graphics unit renders high level objects in a scene into triangles which are pipelined via Z-buffer into triple frame buffers. The hardware is coupled with an excellent renderer, PAZ, specifically designed for interactive simulations. Several boards can be linked together to facilitate mulitple images for a single simulation model. A twin boardset is optimized for stereoscopic imaging such as that required for headmounted displays. Depending on the needs of the user, DesignSpace uses between one and three dView boards per station, outputing 24-bit RGB color.

Polhemus, Inc.

The Polhemus FasTRAK is a four sensor, six degree of freedom electromagnetic tracking instrument. The system consists of a transmitter that sends low-frequency (8-20kHz) electro-magnetic signals sequentially out three orthogonal coils, which are then received by three coils in each sensor. The signals are computed into position and orientation information of the sensors relative to the transmitter, via the resulting 9 equations. The electro-magnetic technology enables accurate short-range tracking without mechanical or line-of-sight constraints. DesignSpace uses a FasTRAK to track the user's viewpoint and principle manipulator, and in some configurations the other hand and torso.

DesignSpace also frequently uses Polhemus's other tracking devices, the InsideTRAK and the IsoTRAK2, for development and demonstrations that do not necessitate the high sampling rates and accuracy of the FasTRAK.

Sharp Electronics Corp.

The Sharp QA-1650 LCD panel is a bright, 24-bit color, active matrix transparent display for overhead projection. DesignSpace uses the Sharp LCD technology in large quanities to paint the design studio walls with a virtual scene. When used with non-wide-angle high-intensity projectors, these panels work well with Da-Lite Rear-Projection Screens to present bright images.

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