The coolest exhibit, though, had to be the one that Joseph had. He's told me before what he works on, but I've mostly seen lots of coding and math. Last Saturday I got to see kids playing with his creation and having a great time. I took these pictures just as the first group was getting there, but for the rest of the day Joseph had a long line and a huge crowd filling his lab. Basically, Joseph Rocks. And Caleb knows it.
Here, the very first girl is wearing the helmet that allows her to see the virtual world and is wearing a glove that allows her to manipulate virtual objects.
If you click on this picture here and look at the television screen you will see the cool drum set Joseph has created. The kids could really play this with their gloved hand and hear sounds through the helmet and external speakers.
There were also virtual blocks the kids could play with and a little dummy they could pick up and move just by pointing at it and waving their hand.
This is Joseph and his adviser getting a girl set up with the helmet. His adviser has been so great. Joseph has been working with him almost since the very beginning of his program. Because of this man, Joseph has been able to work on what he's interested in and create something incredible. We are very grateful for our situation here in Austin.
2 comments:
That is really neat. The Children's museum here in San Antonio had a green screen (blue screen?) that puts kids on a monitor with a virtual drum set. When they hit their hands in the areas where the drums are positioned on the monitor it makes drum sounds. Is this similar to what you do? They didn't have helmets or anything.
What I do is kind of similar, but I assume that the kids hit locations on the 2D monitor that they see. In my version, the kids don't really see themselves, just some floating points that represent the lights that we're tracking on them. However, they see them in full 3D. The helmet has two screens inside that give binocular disparity. So the kids actually have to walk over to the drum set in order to play it. They have to bend down to pick up the blocks off the ground. They can't feel them, of course, but it does a good job of making you feel like you're in a different place.
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