John Kooker (third from left) ended the presentation of the winning project with a demonstration of his iPad-based interface on the new HIPerSpace installation in Jacobs Hall (fka EBU1). More photos here.Electrical engineering (ECE) graduate students created an iPad application that turns the iPad's cool touch interface into a doorway for the cutting edge visualization tools being developed here at UC San Diego.
The students created these projects for the course ECE 291. More details are below, and the full story is on the Jacobs School Web site. (The original Calit2 story was written by Maureen Curran at Calit2 here at UC San Diego)
The students created these projects for the course ECE 291. More details are below, and the full story is on the Jacobs School Web site. (The original Calit2 story was written by Maureen Curran at Calit2 here at UC San Diego)
"My favorite part of doing the project is getting hands-on experience with this incredible new visualization technology," enthused Kooker, "Being able to contribute to that significantly in one quarter was really fun. Also, being able to play with brand new technology, the iPad, was just a thrill."
Kooker's interface ("OptiActor") supports the majority of existing HIPerSpace/OptiPortal applications (primarily visualization apps, including image and video viewers, maps and weather and scientific data visualizations). It has true multitouch and accelerometer-based interaction.
"You have multitouch in your hands, you can paint with your fingers, throw images around, and pinch to zoom, while watching the wall. It's really fun," explained Kooker. It also supports mouse and keyboard emulation, which enables use with older applications that do not support multitouch.
