This section was written by Associate Editor Jean Thilmany.

SAVE THE SPHINX

Some scientists believe the Great Sphinx of Giza—the famous statue of a reclining lion with a human head—may be eroding.

Now a group of researchers at IBM and at Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the library and cultural center in Alexandria, Egypt, have banded together to study—and stop—the erosion of the Great Sphinx, which stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile, near Cairo.

Researchers are combining virtual reality with specialized software to study
the wind’s effects on the Great Sphinx.

The Great Sphinx is carved out of a single ridge of stone 240 feet long and 66 feet high. Now, some Egyptologists say the statue is eroding due to the effects of wind, humidity, and the Cairo smog. According to a statement from IBM, wind, especially when it carries dust, is behind much of the erosion.

The researchers have simulated wind over the statue using the CAVE virtual reality system at the IBM Center for Advanced Studies in Cairo. Researchers also used Avizo Wind software, from Virtualization Science Group Inc. of Burlington, Mass., to analyze and visualize the wind’s effect on the Great Sphinx.

The virtual reality system and the software allow researchers to study, visualize, and understand the degradation of the Great Sphinx, and to present their results to the scientific community.

HEART IN 3-D

James Oliver picked up an Xbox game controller, looked up at a video screen, and used the device’s buttons and joystick to fly through a patient’s chest cavity for an up-close look at the bottom of the heart.

In doing so, the Iowa State professor of mechanical engineering beheld an accurate, 3-D view inside a patient’s heart. The software allowing that view resided on a personal computer.

The software, called BodyViz, developed by Oliver and colleague Eliot Winer, uses patient data obtained from CT and MRI scans. It allows doctors to shift, adjust, turn, zoom, and replay images at will.


Two professors at Iowa State University, Eliot Winer, left, and James Oliver, have developed software that allows doctors to view patients’ hearts and other areas of the body in 3-D to plan surgery or radiation treatment.

Two-dimensional imaging technologies have been used in medicine for a long time, said Winer, an Iowa State University associate professor of mechanical engineering. But those flat images aren’t easily read and understood by anybody but specialists, he added.

“If I’m a surgeon or an oncologist or a primary care physician, I deal with patients in 3-D,” Winer said.

The software, called BodyViz, converts the flat images of medical scans into 3-D images that are easier to see, manipulate, and understand. Thom Lobe, a pediatric surgeon at Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines, helped the engineers design the tool for doctor use.

BodyViz, which can be used to help doctors plan a surgery or a round of radiation therapy, is based on virtual reality technology developed at Iowa State University. BodyViz.com of Ames, Iowa, now sells the software, Winer said.

PERMEABLE WALL

Engineers at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City have demonstrated a wireless network of radio transmitters that tracks people’s movement behind solid walls.

The system could help police and firefighters nab intruders as well as rescue hostages, fire victims, and elderly people who’ve fallen in their homes. It might also be used in retail marketing and border control, said Neal Patwari, assistant professor in the school’s department of electrical and computer engineering.

He worked with Joey Wilson, a doctoral student in the university’s department of electrical and computer engineering. The system they developed relies on radio transmitters and radio tomography to locate and follow people as they move behind solid bodies like walls.

“By showing the locations of people within a building during hostage situations, fires, or other emergencies, radio tomography can help law enforcement and emergency responders to know where they should focus their attention,” Patwari said.

Two University of Utah researchers have developed a system that uses
inexpensive radio transceivers to track movement through walls and behind
other objects. The system could help in rescue operations, they said.

The method uses radio tomographic imaging to locate and track moving people or objects in an area that’s surrounded by inexpensive transceivers that send and receive radio signals. Those identified and followed don’t need to be wearing radio-transmitting identification tags, Patwari said.

Radio tomographic imaging is different and much less expensive than radar, in which radar or radio signals are bounced off targets and the returning echoes or reflections provide the target’s location and speed, he added. RTI measures shadows in radio waves that are created when the waves pass through a moving person or object.

Radio frequency signals can travel through obstructions such as walls, trees, and smoke, while optical and infrared imaging systems cannot, Patwari said.

In their experiments, Wilson and Patwari obtained radio signal strength measurements from all the transceivers—first when a rectangle of space was empty and then when a person walked through it.

They next developed mathematical formulas and used them in a computer program to convert weaker signals, which occur when someone creates shadows by walking through the radio signals, into a blob-like, bird’s-eye-view image of that person walking.

RIDE YOUR DESIGN

Walt Disney World’s latest attraction allows kids to design their own rides and then experience them via a giant robotic arm simulator.

The ride, called the Sum of All Thrills, opened in October and is sponsored by Raytheon. The aim is to show kids how math and engineering make the things they care about, said Kristin Hilf, vice president of Raytheon public affairs.

The ride begins after a tutorial in a design room, she said. Using multi-touch object recognition tables, riders use math and engineering-based tools to design and customize their rides by adding corkscrews, inversions, or steep hills. In the process, they can learn a little bit about mathematical and engineering principles to determine how much energy is needed for a jet to take off or for a roller coaster or bobsled to make it up its first climb.

The Sum of All Thrills, a new ride at Walt Disney World, lets kids design their own ride on a touch screen computer, then hop on a simulation of their ride thanks to a giant robotic-arm simulator.

The design information is saved on a magnetized card strip and fed into the robotic simulator. Kids then hop on the simulator to experience the ride they just designed, said Eric Goodman, Disney Imagineer and Sum of All Thrills project manager.

Inside that simulator, riders experience their ride with high-definition video, stereo sound, and a fan to simulate wind.

As many as three people can experience the same designed ride. Those happy with their designs can keep their cards and ride the same rides for up to six months.

“I did a lot of talking with kids before we got started. What I found is kids typically didn’t like math and didn’t understand how it applied in their lives,” Goodman said. “They always felt there was one answer, and that’s what you’ve got to do—find that one answer.

“What this does is show kids and adults the possibilities. You get to control it,” Goodman said.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Rockwell Automation of Milwaukee has introduced a mechatronics application consisting of software tools, motion control products, and support. /// SpaceClaim of Concord, Mass., maker of 3-D modeling software, has released SpaceClaim 2009+, which supports Windows 7 for 3-D modeling. /// The MathWorks of Natick, Mass., has released a new version of its Parallel Computing Toolbox, which allows users to access data that is stored on multicore computers or computer clusters. /// Knovel of New York, which offers an online library of technical information, has released My Knovel, which allows subscribers to save frequently used resources in personal online folders. /// Autodesk Labs of San Rafael, Calif., has released Piping Design Technology Preview. /// Ledas Ltd. of Novosibirsk, Russia, a provider of design tools for CAD, CAM, and PLM markets, has released version 2.0 of LGS 3D, a geometric constraint solver. It can serve as the core component of parametric 3-D modeling applications. /// Altair Engineering Inc. of Troy, Mich., which makes simulation technology, has announced a new analysis process that reduces the simulation time needed for virtual crash testing. It will be incorporated in the vendor’s crash solver, Radioss. /// IronCAD LLC of Atlanta, a provider of 3-D design productivity software, has released IronCAD version 2009. /// Kubit of Dresden, Germany, is shipping the latest release of PointCloud and PointCloud Pro version 5.0, which process 3-D point clouds in AutoCAD. /// Schroff Development Corp. of Mission, Kan., has published the following guides: Parametric Modeling with Pro/Engineer Wildfire 5.0; Pro/Engineer Wildfire 5.0 Advanced Tutorial; and A Commands Guide Tutorial for SolidWorks 2010.