Tripping to the Moon in Virtual Reality
“The goal is to combine artificial intelligence with the latest advanced graphics and video game-type technology to enable us to create historical archives of people beyond what can be achieved using traditional technologies such as text, audio and video footage,” said Jason Leigh, associate professor of computer science and director of UIC’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory. Leigh is UIC’s lead principal investigator.
Pete Worden, NASA’s director of Ames Research Center, is developing a beta version of moon reality—experienced by up to date virtual reality technology—that will hopefully be available within the next year. Virtual reality is something the younger computer savvy crowd is very aware of, but something the older “less computer savvy” group has very little knowledge about, and probably could care less. NASA is now targeting their first experiment in virtual exploration for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Sastellite, or LCROSS, and Ames-managed mission to launch October 2008. The purpose of the LCROSS probe mission is to crash into the moon, then analyzing the composition of the debris loosened by the impact. Hopefully, the mission will find out how deep NASA will have to dig in order to find water ice and other useful finds.
The interacting with a computer-simulated environment, virtual reality is a special kind of technology that can be real or imagined. Most of what we are familiar with are mainly visual experiences that can be displayed through special stereoscopic displays or a computer screen. A few more advanced simulations can also have sound speakers and headphones, depending on the type of set-up. Word such as force feedback for gaming applications are well known, while users can interact with a virtual environment through the usage of standard input devices.
The most fun thing about it is people all over the work can get together to explore programs, such as NASA’s international partners for the Moon and eventually Mars exploratory missions. Ride along while a global collaborative workspace, according to Worden, offers a key part of international commitment that the United States government has made for the Vision for Space Exploration. NASA has the ability to create high-fidelity virtual rendering virtual rendering of the International Space Station, or ISS.
The National Science Foundation has just awarded a half-million dollar, three-year grant to the University of Illinois at Chicago for computer graphics and interaction, while the University of Central Florida in Orlando on artificial intelligence and natural language processing software, in order to make virtual reality a commonplace thing with the present technology from computer games, animation, and artificial intelligence.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 8:58 am and is filed under Public Relations, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
