Students undertaking courses in the
field of chemistry need to
integrate their spatial skills and conceptual knowledge. However,
model perception along with the understanding of spatial processes
and spatial structures of molecules has been a cause of difficulty
for students as conventional teaching methods cannot fully aid student
comprehension. In this research, we propose a technological solution
to aid the spatial learning process by automatically creating a link
between two-dimensional (2D) representations of chemical structures
and three-dimensional (3D) molecular visualization. The image of a
chemical structure is acquired and processed on-the-fly for structure
identification and 3D model generation. The 3D molecular model is
simplified for real-time interactive rendering. The efficacy of the
proposed solution in enhancing spatial ability of individuals is evaluated
through an experiment on first year undergraduate students. Our analysis
of the results suggests that virtual models and mobile applications
are capable of narrowing the performance gap between students with
different levels of spatial ability.
Video interaction is a common way of communication in cyberspace. It can become more immersive by incorporating haptic modality. Using commonly available depth sensing controllers like Microsoft Kinect, information about the depth of a scene can be captured in real-time together with the video. In this paper, we present a method for real-time haptic interaction with videos containing depth data. Forces are computed based on the depth information. Spatial and temporal filtering of the depth stream is used to provide stability of force feedback delivered to the haptic device. Fast collision detection ensures the proposed approach to be used in real-time. We present an analysis of various factors that affect algorithm performance. The usefulness of the approach is illustrated by highlighting possible application scenarios
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