Jeanne Corcoran, OTD, OTR/L October 6 th, 2011

The mission of Envision Center for Data Perceptualization is to serve, support, and collaborate with faculty, students, and industry to be a leader in scientific visualization, and human computer interaction, through learning, discovery, and engagement.

An exploration of computer graphics, advanced visualization, and human computer interface technologies. The Center aims to develop practical application and create a collaborative perceptualization science. Focus is on research, development, integration, and evaluation of high- end technologies. The motivation is that the center provides the ideal framework for exploring new ideas, discovering new knowledge, and communicating research results through collaborative virtual reality (VR) environments, advanced scientific visualization, interfaces to high-performance computing systems, related human performance issues.

The first purpose is to use computer graphics to create or discover the idea itself through the special properties of visual perception; that is, using vision to think and solve fundamental problems in all disciplines. The second purpose is to communicate an existing idea using computer graphics. After the idea is created or discovered computer graphics can be used to effectively communicate it to others. The visualization facilities will support both the discovery and communication of new ideas.

In the real-world, humans have the natural ability to perceive several things effectively through a combination of multiple sensory modes (such as visual, spatial, aural, verbal, tactile, etc.). Humans have an innate capability to seamlessly communicate, perceive, and interact (called multimodal interaction) with others and the environment using these modes. To provide natural and intuitive interface to the researcher, other sensory modes such as 3- dimensional (3D) 6 degrees-of- freedom (DOF) input trackers (for spatial tracking of hand and head position & orientation), gloves (for fingers gesture recognition), voice recognition (for speech input), & synthesized speech/sound output (for acoustic feedback), will be included and interfaced with visualization displays. These will assist researchers to interact - easily, naturally, and effectively - with complex data sets and to perceive new ideas that are possible these tools.

The Center opened in April 2004 and is a corner stone of an approved $1.7M National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for Major Research Instrumentation. The proposal was a collaborative venture between the public and private sector, with NSF contributing $862,000, Purdue $730,326 for equipment and $2,000,000 for facility construction Corporate partners (IBM and Intel) with in-kind donations worth $327,467.

Proposals are Submitted from any Department on the Purdue Campus Majority are Grant Funded Projects Research Involves faculty, students both undergraduate & graduate and with institutions and the business sector Involves understanding the process and use of 3D animation Over 20 short courses in place Undergraduate & Graduate Curriculum Many Simulated Learning Opportunities

Software Resources Adobe Photoshop CS2 Alias Maya Autodesk 3D Studio Max AVS Express 6.2 OpenSceneGraph VRJuggler

The Vulcan Project The Virtual Pharmacy Clean Room The Proposed New City of Istanbul

aI&feature=

3E T569ho0ZyM lTUuzII0

ozenAnimation.html

What projects are possible? What are the limitations?

The Envision Center (2011). Purdue University. Retrieved October 4, 2011 from