Abstract
The Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) is a fully immersive Virtual Reality (VR) system. CAVE systems have been widely used in many applications, such as architectural and industrial design, medical training and surgery plan, museums and education. However, one limitation for most of the current CAVE systems is that they are separated from the real world. The user in the CAVE is not able to sense the real world around him or her. In this paper, we propose a vConnect architecture, which aims to establish real-time bidirectional information exchange between the virtual world and the real world by utilizing the advanced technologies in cloud computing, mobile communications, wireless sensor networks, and computer vision. Specifically, we address three technical challenges in the proposed vConnect architecture. First, we propose an optimal allocation scheme for the wireless sensor networks to ensure that the data streams captured by the sensors can be delivered to the cloud servers in a reliable and prompt way. Second, we optimize the allocation of the cloud resources to ensure that the data streams sent from the clients can be processed promptly by the cloud servers at a minimal resource cost. Third, we propose to use marker-based finger interactions such that the user in the CAVE can manipulate the information in a natural and intuitive way. Fourth, we implemented a vHealth prototype, a CAVE-based real-time health monitoring system, to validate the proposed vConnect architecture. We demonstrated in the vHealth prototype that the user in the CAVE can visualize and manipulate the real-time physiological data of the patient who is being monitored, and interact with the patient.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abramyan L, Powell M, Norris J (2012) Stage: Controlling space robots from a cave on earth. In: Proceedings of IEEE aerospace conference, pp 1–6
Akpan IJ, Brooks RJ (2014) Experimental evaluation of user performance on two-dimensional and three-dimensional perspective displays in discrete-event simulation. Decision Support Systems
Al-Khalifah AH, Woff R, Alexandrov VN, Roberts DJ (2005) Case study: interacting with volumetric medical datasets in networked cave environments. In: Proceedings of IS&T/SPIE electronic imaging, pp 350–359
Ardagna D, Casolari S, Panicucci B (2011) Flexible distributed capacity allocation and load redirect algorithms for cloud systems. In: Proceedings of IEEE international conference on cloud computing (CLOUD), pp 163–170
Boyd S, Vandenberghe L (2004) Convex optimization. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Cheng L, Niu J, Cao J, Das S, Gu Y (2014) Qos aware geographic opportunistic routing in wireless sensor networks. IEEE Trans Parallel Distrib Syst 25 (7):1864–1875
Creagh H (2003) Cave automatic virtual environment. In: Proceedings of electrical insulation conference and electrical manufacturing & coil winding technology conference, pp 499–504
Gieser SN, Becker E, Makedon F (2013) Using cave in physical rehabilitation exercises for rheumatoid arthritis. In: Proceedings of ACM International conference on PErvasive technologies related to assistive environments
Gross D (2008) Fundamentals of queueing theory. Wiley-India
Kim J-S, Gračanin D, Matković K, Quek F (2010) The effects of finger-walking in place (fwip) for spatial knowledge acquisition in virtual environments. In: Proceedings of springer international symposium on smart graphics, pp 56–67
Koike M, Makino M (2009) Crayon a 3d solid modeling system on the cave. In: Proceedings of IEEE international conference on image and graphics, pp 634–639
Li Y, Shark L-K, Hobbs S J, Ingham J (2010) Real-time immersive table tennis game for two players with motion tracking. In: Proceedings of IEEE international conference on information visualisation, pp 500–505
Lin AY-M, Novo A, Weber PP, Morelli G, Goodman D, Schulze JP (2011) A virtual excavation: combining 3d immersive virtual reality and geophysical surveying. In: Proceedings of springer international symposium on advances in visual computing, pp 229–238
Microsoft windows azure: [online] http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/
Mizutori M, Hirota K, Ikei Y (2012) Skillful manipulation of virtual objects: implementation of juggling in a virtual environment. In: Proceedings of IEEE international conference on virtual systems and multimedia, pp 79–86
Nan X, He Y, Guan L (2012) Optimization of resource reconfiguration for cloud-based multimedia applications. In: Proceedings of IEEE visual communications and image processing (VCIP)
Nan X, He Y, Guan L (2013) Optimal task-level scheduling for cloud based multimedia applications. In: Proceedings of IEEE international conference on acoustics, speech, and signal processing (ICASSP), pp 3771–3775
Nan X, He Y, Guan L (2013) Optimization of workload scheduling for multimedia cloud computing. In: Proceedings of IEEE international symposium on circuits and systems (ISCAS), pp 2872–2875
Nan X, Zhang Z, Zhang N, Guo F, He Y, Guan L (2013) vdesign: toward image segmentation and composition in cave using finger interactions. In: 2013 IEEE China summit & international conference on signal and information processing (ChinaSIP), pp 461–465
Nancel M, Wagner J, Pietriga E, Chapuis O, Mackay W (2011) Mid-air pan-and-zoom on wall-sized displays. In: Proceedings of ACM conference on human factors in computing systems, pp 177–186
Pensieri C, Pennacchini M (2014) Overview: virtual reality in medicine. Journal For Virtual Worlds Research 7(1)
Prachyabrued M, Ducrest D, Borst C (2011) Handymap: a selection interface for cluttered vr environments using a tracked hand-held touch device. In: Proceedings of springer international symposium on advances in visual computing, pp 45–54
Riva G (2003) Applications of virtual environments in medicine. Methods Inf Med 42(5):524–534
Roberts DJ, Wolff R, Otto O (2012) Supporting a closely coupled task between a distributed team: using immersive virtual reality technology. Comput Inform 24(1):7–29
Schaeffer B, Flider M, Kaczmarski H, Vanier L, Chong L, Hasegawa-Johnson Y (2003) Tele-sports and tele-dance: full-body network interaction. In: Proceedings of ACM symposium on virtual reality software and technology, pp 108–116
Shah G, Liang W, Akan O (2012) Cross-layer framework for qos support in wireless multimedia sensor networks. IEEE Trans Multimedia 14(5):1442–1455
Shu MKT, Vrudhula S (2006) Joint optimization of transmit power-time and bit energy efficiency in cdma wireless sensor networks. IEEE Trans Wirel Commun 5 (11):3109–3118
Song P, Goh WB, Fu C-W, Meng Q, Heng P-A (2011) Wysiwyf: exploring and annotating volume data with a tangible handheld device. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, pp 1333–1342
Song P, Goh WB, Hutama W, Fu C-W, Liu X (2012) A handle bar metaphor for virtual object manipulation with mid-air interaction. In: Proceedings of ACM conference on human factors in computing systems, pp 1297–1306
Sutcliffe A, Gault B, Fernando T, Tan K (2006) Investigating interaction in cave virtual environments. ACM Trans Comput Hum Interact (TOCHI) 13(2):235–267
Vogel D, Balakrishnan R (2005) Distant freehand pointing and clicking on very large, high resolution displays. In: Procedings of the 18th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, pp 33–42
von Kapri A, Rick T, Feiner S (2011) Comparing steering-based travel techniques for search tasks in a cave. In: Proceedings of IEEE virtual reality conference, pp 91–94
Vote E, Feliz DA, Laidlaw DH, Joukowsky MS (2002) Discovering petra: archaeological analysis in vr. IEEE Comput Graph Appl 22(5):38–50
Wijayasekara D, Linda O, Manic M (2011) Cave-som: immersive visual data mining using 3d self-organizing maps. In: Proceedings of IEEE international joint conference on neural networks (IJCNN), pp 2471–2478
Wu Q, Boulanger P, Kazakevich M, Taylor R (2010) A real-time performance system for virtual theater. In: Proceedings of ACM workshop on Surreal media and virtual cloning, pp 3– 8
Yates RD, Goodman DJ (2004) Probability and Stochastic Processes, a friendly introduction for electrical and computer engineering. Wiley, New York
Zhang D, Li G, Zheng K, Ming X, Pan Z-H (2014) An energy-balanced routing method based on forward-aware factor for wireless sensor networks. IEEE Trans Ind Inf 10(1):766– 773
Acknowledgments
This work is partially supported by the Discovery Grant of Natural Science and Engineering Council of Canada (No. 238813/2010) and the Key International Collaboration Grant of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61210005).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
He, Y., Zhang, Z., Nan, X. et al. vConnect: perceive and interact with real world from CAVE. Multimed Tools Appl 76, 1479–1508 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-3121-4
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-3121-4