Scientific Visualization System on a Chip with Tangible User Interface

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the development of the ontology-driven standalone scientific visualization station based on a single-board microcomputer with custom tangible user interface. Such a station can be used as a powerful demonstration tool in various scenarios including interactive museum exhibitions. According to the approach proposed, the particular instance of a software scientific visualization system is generated automatically by a high-level platform SciVi that was been developed earlier. Previously, ontology-driven software generation mechanisms within SciVi were tested on the firmware generation for the microcontroller units. Currently we present a generalization of this technique to the case of systems on chips like Raspberry Pi or Orange Pi. Data preprocessing and rendering capabilities of SciVi are reused without modifications from the previous stages of development, while the new mechanisms of taking into account the specifics of systems on chips software and hardware organization are introduced via extending the appropriate SciVi ontologies. The generalized technique is tested in practice by creating a set of interactive museum items for the “Transmutations” exhibition within Kidsmuseum, branch of Perm Regional Museum.