Christoph Maggioni

A novel gestural input device for virtual reality

The ImageGlove is 3D input device with six degrees-of-freedom that can be used to interface with non-immersive virtual environments. It is possible to detect the position and orientation of the human hand in real time. The authors device can be used as a wireless replacement for the Polhemus position sensor. The system allows one to use the human hand as an input device to interact with 3D virtual-reality applications in a very natural way.<<ETX>>

Non Immersive Control of Virtual Environments

Three-dimensional representations of real environments form a new means of communication between man and machine, making explicit use of mechanisms which humans have learned and experienced during their whole lives in moving themselves and manipulating objects. Two central observations regarding human communication and behaviour can be made: people have a natural ability to move and act in their three-dimensional environment, and they naturally use hand gestures as a means of communication. We present a non-immersive three-dimensional input device that allows applications to be controlled by gestures of the human hand. Hand position, orientation and finger gestures are obtained using a video camera and image processing techniques. The system works in real-time and controls a three-dimensional virtual environment. Our input device has proven to be very reliable and is more natural to use than other conventional computer input systems.

3-D pose estimation by an improved Kohonen-Net

A primary task in the process of three-dimensional object recognition given a two-dimensional image lies in the model-based pose estimation in space. Given a known set of correspondences between three-dimensional model points or different model features and two-dimensional image points or image features: What are the transformation and model parameters which convert the three-dimensional model into the observed two-dimensional image.