Raytheon Company

Hrl Laboratories, LLC

Jason Jerald

Howard Neely, Iii

Jason Fox

Peter Allmond Tinker

Matthew William Shomphe

Mathias Kolsch

The present invention relates to a system, method, and computer program product for immersive navigation in a virtual environment (VE) suitable for allowing a user to change a view orientation in the VE independently of physical orientation of a user input, such as orientation of the user's head. Specifically, the present invention combines three distinct virtual reality navigation metaphors (trackball navigation, grab navigation, and immersive navigation) into a hybrid navigation approach generating a final virtual-viewpoint that correlates to the characteristics of an intermediate virtual-viewpoint defined by radius, pitch, and heading of a virtual reference sphere (as in trackball navigation), while the final virtual-viewpoint also adjusts the location and gaze direction of the intermediate virtual-viewpoint based on pitch, heading, and roll of the user's head (as in immersive navigation), thus allowing the user to view a point of interest in the VE while simultaneously facing comfortably forward in the physical world.

Method and system for hybrid trackball and immersive navigation in a virtual environment

A distributed multimodal collaboration system includes at least one server coupled to a network, a plurality of data sources coupled to the network and a plurality of clients executing on a corresponding plurality of client workstations coupled to the network. The system further includes a tuple-space having a plurality of descriptors. The tuple-space is accessible by the plurality of data sources, and the plurality of clients, and a descriptor distribution and invalidation protocol is operative to distribute and invalidate descriptors accessible by the plurality of clients and the plurality of data sources, and the system includes a transaction processor for committing a plurality of transactions associated with the descriptor distribution and invalidation protocol.

System and method for distributed multimodal collaboration using a tuple-space

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Chapel Hill, NC, United States of America

Jason Jerald