Today is our last day of the summer extetion of our research project. We will continue our research starting fall semester 2005. We will also hopefully implementing our project during the local anesthesia courses starting in October 2005. Today we discussed how we thought our research was progressing and any ideas of how we could improve during the fall. We will be including in our research team Heidi Law, another Dental Hygiene undergraduate research student who will be taking over the majority of the project during the fall.

We have submitted proposals for further funding from our specific college at Weber State University and we will continue to wait for any kind of word from them. We will then be able to purchase the equipment needed to implement.

The undergraduate research students on the team have started to write their bachelor thesis paper and should be able to complete the entirity of it except for the results section which will be in October 2005.

We have submitted to numerous research conferences as mentioned in past blogs and hope to be accepted to present our research at one or all of them.

Our knowledge of augmented reality/ mixed reality has significantly expanded and our research project is well underway for implementation. We feel that our summer hours have been spent very productively and that our project can benefit the dental hygiene department and can be expanded eventually to benefit other healthcare departments at Weber State University.

This blog will continue when the fall semester 2005 begins.

Today we went to Utah State University and met with Asst. Prof. Brett Shelton, PhD. He was very patient and helpful in sharing his views on where we stand with our project and where we should be headed in the future. We really appreciate his willingness to share his time and his vast knowledge with us! Here are a number of things we discussed with Prof. Shelton.

There are different advantages and disadvantages of DAZ studio vs. Zygote for creating an image to work with. We like the idea of using Zygote because they seem willing to help us develop whatever we need for our project. But, the best order to work would be to consider sensors first, then haptics, then the HMD, and leave the actual image as the last consideration. We need to decide what kind of tracking system we plan on purchasing. Find out how closely they can track accuracy. Find out what kind of support they offer for movement, etc. Start with the sensing system and find out how well they work with the 3D image program we use (either DAZ or Zygote). Ask what HMD’s they recommend and what kind of resolution they know works best with their sensors. Check to make sure of what kind of files they render and then make sure DAZ or Zygote can support those files. Aslo make sure that the haptics we want to use will be compatible. With remote sensing, wireless would be better for the range of movement, etc. Smaller sensors would better fill our needs for this project.

We discussed VRML. It was created to work more quickly with the internet, but the clarity and resolution shouldn’t be affected. We don’t know yet if our expectations are too high for ARToolkit.

It would be a good idea to have students practice the injections with the underlying structures visible, and then practice again with those structures covered to get a better idea of what it will be like on a real person.

Eventually, see-through glasses would be better for this project because then it would not be necessary to attach a camera.

We realized today that not only do we need to be able to receive feedback from the syringe, but also from the other hand as it pulls back the cheek and feels for anatomical landmarks. This will require additional sensors! It will be very difficult to make it feel like you really have your finger in a person’s mouth. The structures won’t manipulate like they would on a real person. For the pilot project we will probably only be able to SEE structures. The most important thing right now is for us to get this pilot project up and running so that we can open the door for future funding to further this research.

When we told Prof. Shelton that we wanted to try and present our research at the international level, he suggested that we look at the ISMAR conference, which is aimed toward this type of technology. He thought it was a great idea for us to present internationally and encouraged us to pursue this goal.

The last thing we did was to take a tour of the Creative Learning Environment (CLE) computer lab, which Prof. Shelton helped to launch at Utah State. We really appreciate all his help today and hope to continue working with him in the future!

We found out that the meeting for the undergraduate research commitee is to be held sometime this week and therefore our purpose for todays meeting is to prepare our proposal for further funding. We contacted all the companies that we plan to purchase materials from for more specific estimate of cost and detailed information about the products we intend to purchase.

The companies included:

• Ascention technologies- flock of birds tracking system
• Zygote- male human anatomy 3d image (we discovered this company through a google search which took us to "Turbo Squid" which is an independent contractor company that has compiled a webpage of different 3d images from different companies.)
  

We emailed the specifics of our project to each of these companies and are now waiting for a response and a price quote.
We have set up a meeting with Brett Shelton, a professor and expert in mixed reality at Utah State University in Logan. He will help us to know how to progress and what the next phases of our pilot project might be.