Environmental Technology: Making the Real World Virtual

Reading this paper brings to my mind some of the sci-fi fiction movies where machines and humans are interacting with each making world more comfortable and machines more useful. Author talks in similar terms about integrating computers and their power in the daily life of the human beings. Author suggests that the interaction between the machine and humans should be natural and comfortable and he has mentioned about Sutherlands head mounted device which he rejected as it was not comfortable. In order to demonstrate his intention, he worked under a framework where the environment interacted with the user based on his actions. He also talks about another of his systems where, two geographically separated individuals were able to communicate naturally by superimposing the data image of the user over the computer graphics which were controlled by the data tablet. In another form of such a communication system, the hand images of the users were superimposed on computer graphics so they are able to use their hands to communicate as it they were sitting together. Author also mentions about usage of projection displays to create a virtual world where, the subject can fly by leaning towards the direction in which he would like to fly. Another interesting application in the paper was VIDEOPLACE which enables users to interact with the 2D projection of the images in a special room. VIDEOPLACE was improved to VIDEODESK where interaction occurs in three dimensions which could be helpful in 3D sculpting. The paper also about the system where children were animated in a graphical scene to learn the concepts while experiencing it .

Discussion

This paper presents various efforts by the author during his research career in bringing computers into the daily life of humans through interactions. I believe this is the common goal in the Computer human interaction to use the existing technologies, improve them and make them more usable for the masses. This paper for me is motivation about how simple concepts and ideas of the existing technology can be manipulated keeping in mind the psychology and perceptual knowledge about the human brain to build more useful computer technology.