Brief Description
of
Virtual Hand: a Human-Hand Simulation
System for Human Computer Interactions in Virtual Environment
In human computer interaction (HCI), traditional controlling and navigating devices become unsuitable for natural communication between the operator and the computer. The human hand is considered by many as a reasonable vision-based HCI modality [[1] [2] [3]]. The initial step for using this kind of HCI modality is to create a human hand simulation and training system.
Our proposed system, Virtual Hand, will create an anatomically-based hand model and implement hand calibration and constraints, using knowledge gained from mechanical and kinematical studies of the human hand. In addition, Virtual Hand will provide two simulation applications: ground truth data of the hand for vision-based HCI experiments, as well as being an environment for testing (inverse) kinematics on the (robotic) hand. In the following few paragraphs we give a brief description of the related work and our goals for Virtual Hand.
Research work has been reported about the mechanics and motions of the human hand [[4] [5] [6]], about hand modeling in the computer vision field [[7] [8] [9]], in graphics where hand modeling is a small part of the creation of the virtual human [[10] [11] [12] [13] [14]], and about hand constraint studying and implementation [[15] [16] [17] [18]]. But there are problems with the current models. For example, they render poorly, consume too much time, or neglect or reduce the complexity of the hand finger movements. They only combine the static hand constraints and very few of the dynamic constraints and the function of the “thumb” is nearly ignored.
We propose Virtual Hand to explore these problems and to combine all these considerations into a real-time hand simulation testbed. Some necessary work has already done for this system [[19]], including a life-size (dynamic) hand model (with little deformation), static hand constraint implementation, and a prototype GUI. Our proposed system will build upon the limited prototype and add the following enhancements: better hand modeling, hand calibration, more constraint implementations, and two simulation applications, as well as enhancing the interface for usability.
References:
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[2] Ying Wu and Thomas S. Huang. Hand modeling, analysis,
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[3]Joseph J. LaViola Jr.
Whole-Hand and Speech Input in
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[6]
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[19] Development of
a Nationally Competitive Program in Computer Vision Technologies for Effective
Human-Computer Interaction in Virtual Environments. http://www.cs.unr.edu/~aerol/projecthome/,