Page 174 - Intelligent Communication Systems

I 46 INTELLIGENT COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

FIGURE I I. I I Scene of HyperCIass.

A joint experiment on HyperCIass was carried out by connecting Waseda
University, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and the Queensland
Open Learning Network, Queensland, Australia over the Internet. One of their
tasks was to handle a Japanese artifact. The Japanese teacher talked about Japanese
history while handling the virtual object via hand gesture. Then a student of
Victoria University and a staff member of the Queensland Open Learning Network
handled the object by computer mouse. Another of their tasks was to learn how to
assemble a computer from components, by means of hand gesture and the mouse.
First, the Japanese teacher showed how to assemble a computer. Then a student
and a staff member tried to assemble it. All tasks were conducted in real time.
This system required an intelligent coding technology, which was invented,
developed, and installed. The amount of information needed to represent a virtual
object such as a Japanese artifact is about 5-10 Mbytes. If the object information
is transmitted over the Internet during the class, it is difficult to do this in real-time.
To achieve a real-time operation, the intelligent coding technology was installed
in HyperCIass. The main features of intelligent coding technology are as follows.
First the object information, such as a virtual object, teacher's objects, and the class
object, are transmitted via the Internet before the class starts. During class, only
the movement information, such as the object's motion or the teacher's motions,
is transmitted. Using this movement information, the virtual object and teachers'
objects are adjusted and displayed in HyperCIass. Information is transmitted
during the class at about 200 bytes/second, so the class was conducted in real time.
Wearing shutter glasses gives a stereoscopic view of the objects. In this system a
virtual 3D space is created in cyberspace, and anyone can join in and see it together.
And they can also handle the virtual object by hand gesture and mouse. This exper-
iment shows that a virtual 3D cyberspace is useful for education.