DEVELOP’s Highly-portable Immersive Virtual Environment (The HIVE)

Langley2DEVELOP Virtual Poster Session, Original, Technology

Image of person in front of a screen showing the person

DEVELOP Langley students present their spring 2011 research results to Langley Science Directorate staff. Photo Credit: Karen Allsbrook.

DEVELOP Langley students present their spring 2011 research results to Langley Science Directorate staff. Photo Credit: Karen Allsbrook.

Team location: Langley Research Center
Authors:
Nelson Hillyer, SSAI Langley Research Center (Science Advisor)
James Farmer
Malcom Jones
Nathan Walker
Brittany Dufort
Matei Bivolaru
Abstract: The HIVE is a lightweight and portable immersive visualization system designed and built by DEVELOP at NASA Langley Research Center. The HIVE’s primary purpose is displaying Earth science data and engineering models in a stereographic environment that can more easily convey information and ideas to an audience. This project’s purpose is intended on being a support tool for other DEVELOP projects to utilize. The HIVE team works with other DEVELOP teams to produce three-dimensional worlds displaying the NASA EOS data utilized by the science team in their data analysis. The collaborating team can use the HIVE-based visualization to demonstrate project methodologies and results at conferences or to policy makers and other DEVELOP partners/stakeholders. During this spring term, the HIVE team worked with the Great Lakes Asian Carp project conducted at Langley Research Center and the Great Lakes team locations. The HIVE team worked to create a story board for the Asian Carp project that will be rendered into a 3D visualization tour of potential Asian Carp spawning habitat hotspots in Lake Michigan for display at the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative Annual Conference in June 2011. The team also integrated Microsoft’s Kinect into the HIVE for controlling the 3D virtual environments displayed with body movement, primarily hands and arms. Utilizing the Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST), the team was able to program individual body movements to translate into onscreen commands in the virtual environment.
Download the poster PDF here.