We have returned from the summer and are now in the fall semester 2005. We submitted a proposal for funding to purchase equipment for our project. We will be purchasing the "flock of birds" sensor system and the one of the omni haptics packages. We will also purchase our 3D image from Zygote. We also made a proposal for funding to send Marie, Heidi and I to the ADEA conference in Orlando, Florida. We have not yet heard back from the conference or the undergraduate research board. We hope to hear confirmation around the first week of December.

• We have come across a step in our project that we overlooked. Our AR team and the independent computer science consultants and Brett Shelton from Utah State all thought that when we purchased the Flock of Birds sensor package, we would also receive the appropriate software, "rendering engine," that would basically integrate all the different parts. We were mistaken and we will not get the software from the Flock of Birds. This poses a problem for the continuation of our research.

Rendering is defined as taking a set of data points (XYZ) in a virtual world nd drawing them on the computer screen in a 2D image. Our project entails taking a 2D image seen through the HMD and trying to make it into a 3D image. It is relatively easy to program around three data points from one source but it is more difficult to take data points from different sources and incorporate them into one image. This means that we need some institute that is either using a rendering engine all ready programed that we can use at our University, or incorporate a computer science students from a University that has a rendering engine to come on board our project, it also means that we could hire a programmer that would be full time on our project. These are just ideas, we have not made any decisions at this time but we will need to in the next couple of weeks.

An important part of our haptics and sensor system is having the computer able to recognize a change in material on our 3D object and then having the information from the computer able to be recognized by the stylus/ haptics piece. When choosing sensors, we need to know if the sensors are able to give a set of data points to say "what is where." We also need to find our how good our software is, we now know that we have no software.

• The combination of the two should result in "relative position." meaning, Our image and the computer tells us in"real time" where the stylus is in position to the head.
  

According to one of our Independent consultants, Lynden Jones, if we do not have the appropriate software, which we do not, it would take longer then our January deadline to program software to our specific requirements. However, we have come across a "rendering engine" that we can purchase from sense8.com called worldtoolkit, costing around $10,000. We have another opportunity to request funding, deadline Dec 1, 2005, if that is what needs to happen for our project to continue.