Today our objective was to present our research to the Dean of the College of Health Professions. The individuals that were present at the meeting were Shelley Conroy (Dean), Craig Gundy (Assistant Dean), Alan Lewis (Computer Support), Stephanie Bossenburger-james (Director of the Dental Hygiene Program), and Kami Hanson (Dental Hygiene faculty and Project Mentor). We presented eveyone a packet of our research and our future intentions and ambitions for our project. It contained a detailed summary of the pilot project, which we are doing this summer, including conferences we would like to be funded for and a budget of past expenses and proposal for future expenses. The packet included a student request for funding sections which included funding proposals for travel, project supplies, and a stipend for this summers research. It also included a full detailed project description of the projects multiple phases and long-range goals. The meeting commenced at 10:00 am and lasted for about an hour. We described our project and how and why we got started and how we can progress. We also explained that our project full scale can include other departments at Weber State. The 3d image of a skull can include the full body and can be integrated into the nursing program. The 3d image may be able to be produced through the department of visual arts and the specific software programming can be done through the computer science department. We would like the involvment of any department on campus that wants to contribute to the perfection of Weber States own Human Interface Lab. We also consider the contribution of other departments expertise to be a valuable asset to the completion of the project.

Our goal for the meeting was to plant a seed of our ambitions and to help others recognize how valuable and prestigious our project will be to specific health centered programs at Weber State and to the University as a whole.

Future goals

Continue to research different converters and 3d modelers to render a more detailed image
meet with Brett Shelton at Utah State University to collaborate and know how to further progress
Insert the image into the artoolkit coding for the webcam to recognize and then render a 3d image from a pattern
continue our enthusiasm for the research and its benefits to the University and Dental Hygiene Program

Our assignment over the weekend was to find a converter program that would convert .obj files to vrml. We found a free converter download online called Wings 3D. We import our saved image from Daz Studio into wings 3d and then we export it and save it as a vrml (.wml) file. We then did a google search for vrml plugins which would allow us to view our saved images from Daz Stuio as vrml file. We found several plugins (cosmo player, cortona, and XJ3D) We decided on the cortona. We were able to get it working on both the mac and the pc. Unfortuntely, there is hardly any detail or color to the image. We think it might be a problem with our Daz Studio image export.

Thursday, we have a meeting with the Dean of the College of Health Professions to give her an idea of our research so far and also to give her an idea of where we would like to take our project and what the future goals are.

Future objectives:

How to get better detail on our vrml image
Look into remote sensing equiptment
How do we progress from here?
Meet with and collaborate with team members from Utah State University

Since we are at a stand still in our progress, we decided to present the research we have done so far to the assistant dean of the College of Health Science at Weber State University, Dr. Craig Gundy. We showed him the 3d image we were able to produce from Daz Studios, we showed him the difference in quality of the graphics between PC's and Mac's. We also showed him the vrml image we are able to render using the artoolkit 2.6 on the PC. We had Dr. Gundy come for a presentation to give us recommendations on how best to proceed with getting more funding for our project. He recommended we give a presentation to the Dean of the College of Health Science, Shelley Conroy. He also recommended that we put in a proposal for funding directly from our specific college instead of from the University.

Today we also took photographs of members of our group using the patterns from the artoolkit and the ar glasses in a clinical setting. We imported these pictures onto a document along with a description of our project and the members involved that will be sent to Utah State University to be posted on their Creative Learning Enviroments website.

We manipulated images in Daz Studio to get the 3d image the way we would be seeing it in a clinical setting. We were also able to turn the muscles on the skeleton 50% translucent so the skeleton could be seen through the muscles, the teeth could be seen through the cheek and jaw muscles. This is important for the whole purpose of our project, to help students to visualize the landmarks needed to give local anesthetic.

Alan worked on our project on his own computers (mac 10.4 and mac 10.3). He was able to get artoolkit rendering images. He put the programs he used, and a copy of his own computers operating system onto a portable hard drive. He concluded that their is something in common with the laptop mac computers that our group is using the is disrupting the functions of the artoolkit. He wants to try finding what that problem is but the alternative or "quick fix" would be to just use the USB ports on our laptops and download the programs that he has on his portable hard drive.

We hope to have our funding in a couple of weeks and be able to progress our project further.

As we are in the beginning phases of this four year project, we have the task of troubleshooting all the problems that occur. Our progression is somewhat stalled because we are in need of more funding for haptics (from SensAble technologies) and other essential materials. We are also stalled on our progress with the mac computer because we keep getting warnings and errors when we try to install and build all the programs we need to use the newest version of artoolkit (2.70.1). We went to the README file for instructions on how to build artoolkit using a mac and we got to the process of installing Mozilla-dev when on one mac computer a warning message appeared:

Warning: if you compile x11 applications against this xfree86 release, you will not be able to run them if you decide to revert to apples x11 provided with panther. You have an existing x11 installation in /usr/x11r6 and or /etc/x11. This package refuses to overwrite these. Remove them then tell fink to install xfree86 again. The package won't recompile. If you want to keep your x11 installation, install system-xfree86 resp. system-xtools instead to make this known to finks package system.

On another computer we got a different error:

Failed: no package found for openvrml4-dev and openvrml5-dev

For both of these errors we have found no solutions. We copied and pasted the errors into a google search and came up with the artoolkit mailing list archive. Other users of artoolkit on the mac have had the same problems and the solution given was to update fink commander by going to source, update-cvs in the fink commander utilities bar. We tried this on all computers and when the selfupdate was complete it recommended that fink update all of its packages. So then we ran source, sef-update, update-all. After this was completed we then again tried to follow the instructions on the README file but the same errors kept appearing.

We continued to troubleshoot by uninstalling and then reinstalling the programs need for this project (x11, xcode, artoolkit, fink) But with no luck.



The artoolkit( old version) works well with the PC and the ar glasses work but the only obstacle is converting our .obj image we saved from daz studio into a vrml image. For this we need a converter but our attempts to find a converter online has been slow. We found one called uvmapper but with this we ourselves have to reconvert the blob the appears back into our image. We will continue to research converters. So for now our goal is to find a converter and produce our 3d image on the PC using the artoolkit patterns. We will have to retrain the existing pattens to recognize the specific image we have saved.

Alan gave us some good recommendations to increase our knowledge base of computers, esp. mac. He recommended we purchase the "missing manual" series which is a users guide to mac computers. He also told us about another department at Weber State University, the physics department, doing a large project using macs. The head of the department is John Armstrong and the project is called SAVI. We may look into collaborating and sharing information.

Our project is in collaboration with the instructional technology department at Utah State University. They have invited our Augmented Reality group to present our research at the IT conference this fall. We are also submitting proposals for funding to attend the siggraph conference in Los Angeles 2005 and two other international conferences in Italy and Austrailia. We are hoping that we can establish an international connection for Weber State.

Our future goals are:

Find a converter
retrain an artoolkit pattern to recognize our image
get more funding from undergraduate research
eventually get the artoolkit to work on the mac

We petitioned the help of a Weber State University employee named Alan Lewis who is an expert in Mac computers to help us with our augmented reality project. The objectives for today were:

How to render images using the mac artoolkit

We compiled xtools with the new version of artoolkit(2.70.1) found at sourceforge.net/projects/artoolkit, using the terminal and the instructions off the readme file. We then downloaded mac X11 and finkcommander at apple.com. These programs are all required to render 3d images in artoolkit. We then were able to render a 3d image from the sinplelite file of a multi-colored cube using the Hiro pattern. The other patterns and files were not accessible as yet.

Alan was then gracious enough to give us a general tutorial session on how to use the terminal and the meaning behind all the symbols and file abbreviation and other keyboard commands. He also explained basic mac computer functions. He is a valuable resource to our project and to the University and we hope that he continues to share his knowledge base with us.

Today we also referenced a souce of information from Lynden Jones, who is a computer programmer at IHC. He was able to explain over the phone part of the compilling process and help us to render the image in simplelite. He is also a very valuable resource that we will hopefully be able to use in the future.

Future objectives:

Vrml image rendering

Inserting saved images into artoolkit coding

Folllow up on questions noted on July 7,2005

Today our objectives were as follows:

• Investigate web browser plugins.
  

We went online and searched for Vrml browser plugins to access onine 3d images. We downloaded the XJ3d browser from mac3d.org that is compatible for mac computers and mac 3d images.

• Research websites to build our knowledge base on augmented reality.
  

We visited and bookmarked the websites for the Washington Hitlab, Dart (gvu.gatech.edu/dart/), MIT(csail.mit.edu) and macweb3d.org.

• Detail literature review for bachelors thesis paper.
  

The outline is in printed form and each member of our group has a copy it was also sent electronically via email. This outline will help us to get started in August 2005 on our bachelors paper for our bachelors degree.

• Interface daz studio graphic with artoolkit.

We are not able to accomplish this unitl all mac computers have downloaded xcode-tools, the equivalent of microsoft visual studios, to be used with the mac version of artoolkit. We will continue to work on this objective.

• Mac webcams.
  

We purchased mac compatible webcams and installed them on each computer.




Future objectives will be:

• Start a search for haptics rendering software/programs.
  

We have been researching a company called "Teleos." Although our research has been extensive we have been unable to locate a website or any form of contact to purchase their haptics software. We found a name and phone number supposably from teleos research but only got an answering machine when we called (Ann Reid 415-328-8800) We will continue to look for other companies as well as continue our search for teleos.

We continued to work on the Daz Studio 3d images. We purchased muscle maps so now our image can be skeleton, skin, or muscles. The anatomy on the 3d figures is very realistic and detailed which serendipitously can be used also in the Dental Anatomy class required for Dental Hygiene. The steps for creating an image are as follows:

• select MS or V3 nonconforming skeletons

• then choose M3SRI under Daz Studio People

• highlight M3SRI and "fit to" skeleton (fit to is located under parameters)

• go into "scene" choose M3SRI, poses, Daz skeleton, and the choose the zero figure

• go into "scene" choose M3 skeleton, poses, Daz skeleton, and choose the zero figure

• Now you can select which translucency you prefer but make sure M3SRI is highlighted.

• now you are able to inject all or some expressions/morphs. (INJ = injected, REM = remove)

Questions that we had while we were manipulating our images:

Why does the image have two sets of teeth when the mouth is opened?
the answer is because the skeleton and the muscle images are overlapped onto each other and both have a set of teeth. You need to turn the visiblity off on one set.

When we save the 3d image that we have created, how do we get the object to respond to manipulation? Is this part of haptic authoring or do we need to create other 3d images?

How do we render the image and its responses all at once in a smooth sequence?

How do we render images in our HMD glasses as an image only and not including the computer screen?

Do we need to attach our web camera to our HMD?

Is the HMD Mac compatible, as we are all using mac notebook computers?

As we continue our research we hope to find the answers to these questions and will probably reveal more questions that will help our AR project to progress.