Development Of Tangible Terrain Representation System For Highway Route Planning
Koji Makanae, Morio Nakahara · Proceedings of the Joint CIB W78, W102, ICCCBE, ICCC, and DMUCE International Conference on Computing and Decision Making in Civil and Building Engineering, Montreal, Canada, 14-16 June · 2006
In recent years, mixed reality, which aims to integrate virtual space with real space have be received a significant amount of attention in research and development. In particular, tangible interface is one of the interesting research growth area. Believing that the introduction of a tangible interface helps recognize the 3-D feature of the terrain, a tangible terrain representation system (TTRS) for highway design is under development by the authors. The TTRS can represent a terrain surface by controlling the shape of a stretchable screen used to represent the terrain surface by means of a total of 64 actuators (8×8) and projecting an aerial photograph onto the screen. Applying the TTRS to highway planning, a highway alignment is determined by control points which are positioned by the magnetic position device. As a highway planner set the control point of a highway alignment on the TTRS, the image of a highway alignment is projected on the TTRS. By using this system, a planner can obtain images of terrain and highways intuitively without wearing any head mounted equipment. The paper outline future development which is required to improve the presentation of precise terrain in the TTRS, and develop its application for design.