Project description: Many interactive graphical applications incorporate direct manipulation as a dominant interaction method for configuring and arranging graphical objects. Emerging applications in 3D virtual environments, such as scene setup, object assembly, and posing a virtual character, require more sophisticated yet natural manipulation schemes. Traditional manipulation techniques that employ forward kinematics or other direct manipulation of objects’ state do not provide convenient control of complex object configurations. As 3D virtual environment applications mature, the creation and arrangement of realistic scenes cluttered with large numbers of objects, many of them in contact, remains a significant challenge.

This work was motivated by the observation that existing approaches fail to support collision detection and penetration avoidance, which ensure physically plausible object behavior during manipulation. Furthermore, previous approaches are not fast enough to be used interactively or compromise with reduced coordinate system that limits the flexibility and scalability. A geometrically aware object manipulation system that enforces both kinematic and geometric constraints can make complex scene creation and character manipulation substantially easier and less tedious.

Publications:

Min-Hyung Choi, James F. Cremer, Geometrically-Aware Interactive Object Manipulation, The Journal of Eurographics Computer Graphics Forum. Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 65 - 76, 2000 PDF BiBTex

Min-Hyung Choi, James F. Cremer, Interactive Manipulation of Articulated Objects with Geometry Awareness, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference of Robotics and Automation (ICRA), April 1999 PDF BiBTex