Representative spherical plane method and composition of object manipulation methods

Natural and realistic object manipulation with the hand is a basic, yet vital issue for virtual reality technology to make the application a more useful one, and to display a higher degree of presence for the user via interaction. This paper aims to discuss the development of a globally-generic, realistic manipulation calculation model which is based on the integration of several subcomponent manipulation calculation models. First, the conceptual framework for composing manipulations is described. Manipulation is abstracted into three categories: the free, the restrictive and the boundary regions. The impetus method is introduced, which supports the boundary region and properly detects which region the current situation of an object belongs to. The manipulations are composed based on this type of capability. Next, the representative spherical plane method (RSPM) is proposed and realized for the restrictive region. This model can generate the behavior of an object manipulated with two or three fingertips. As a result of the successful integration of these models, a smooth sequence of different manipulations was realized. Experimental results support the advantage of this method.