Scientific Visualisation with Haptics using VTK and Reachin API

In scientific visualisation data with multi-dimensional spaces and values are projected down to 3D, and sometimes even 2D. Colours and glyphs are often used to visually describe the complex data. With the introduction of haptic force feedback, also material properties can be used to present data properties often in an even more intuitive way, for example by mapping density to hardness or diffusion to viscosity.

Visualisation Toolkit (VTK) is one of the most complete and most widely used open source visualisation packages available today. As an aid in the exploration of the visualisations, some integration of haptic feedback techniques to VTK has been conducted, however, without encouraging results. The largest problem is the lack of transformation control in VTK, which makes the correlation between the human computer interface device and the visualisation hard to control. This, however, is one of the strengths of the Reachin API --- the close connection with the scene-graph structure and real 3D devices makes it quite easy to implement intuitive navigation and exploration tools.

The aim of this project is to make a bridge to connect the filtering pipeline from VTK to the haptics/graphics scene-graph of the Reachin API, so that interactive visual and haptic exploration of both polygonal and volumetric data can be conducted. Preliminary results include connecting PolyDataSource filters to IndexedTriangleSet-nodes, without considering colouring or texturing. As the project proceeds a connection of volumetric data to the VolumeHaptics Toolkit is expected, as well as more advanced propagation of properties and elaborate use of and connection between filtering and routing.

This work will result in a toolkit for the Reachin API, that can be used for scientific visualisation together with the VolumeHaptics Toolkit. The implementation of an example application for volume processing and exploration will provide a proof of concept.

Good programming skills are needed, since programming will be conducted in C++, Python and VRML, as well as good insight in the structure of the Reachin API and Visualisation Toolkit, template programming and the standard template library.

This project is suitable for 1 student.