Foresight Update 8
page 2
A publication of the Foresight Institute
 New
Technology: Virtual Reality
by David Gagliano
Computers have become critical support tools for the
development of advanced technologies. They will be essential for
developing nanotechnology, yet the complexity of most computer
systems makes them difficult to use. The learning barrier that
must be overcome to use a computer system prevents people from
exploiting computers to their full potential.
Researchers have been experimenting with a new genre of computer
interface technology to make complex systems easier to use.
Termed Virtual Reality (VR), this new interface technology will
revolutionize the way people think about and work with computers.
Instead of forcing the user to learn awkward control devices,
such as the keyboard, a VR interface supports interactions
already familiar to the user. The user is placed in a simulated
working environment where gestures and spoken commands are used
to control simulated objects. VR uses a combination of
stereoscopic image generation and sensor technologies to simulate
the interaction environment. Computers generate 3D images of the
environment while sensors track the user's movements. The user is
provided with a sense of being an active participant in the
simulation, a feeling reminiscent of the movie TRON.
The image generation technology essential for creating virtual
environments has been developing quickly. Researchers supporting
NASA's Virtual Environment Workstation project have developed a
prototype 3D display system using color liquid crystal display
screens (similar to those found on portable TVs) mounted on a
lightweight helmet. Computers drive each eye's LCD with the
appropriate images, and the person wearing the helmet sees the
simulated environment in 3D. Coupling the helmet with sensors for
head orientation and eye movement allows the user to gaze about
the simulated environment while the computer generates the
appropriate scenery.
Researchers working on the U.S. Air Force's Super Cockpit program
have developed a helmet-mounted display tube that projects its
image onto a clear acrylic visor. The clear visor display allows
computer generated images to be superimposed over the user's
vision. Rather than replace the user's environment with an
artificial one, a clear display system would help a user/wearer
better interact with the real environment. Similar displays for
automobiles would allow a driver to read a car's instrumentation
without diverting attention from the road.
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| The user "feels" the
molecules moving against each other |
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Helmet-based displays allow the user to look about the VR, but
the user also needs a way to interact with simulated objects. VPL
Inc. of Redwood City, CA, recently introduced a VR interface
technology that links the operator's movements to the computer.
Flexible sensors sewn onto a lightweight fabric provide
information on the orientation of the user's hand and the
positions of the fingers to the computer controlling the
simulation. When wearing DataGlovesTM in a VR, the
user can reach out and grasp elements of the modeled environment.
VPL recently extended the DataGlove concept to bring the rest of
the body into the simulation, creating a DataSuitTM
The commercial products produced by VPL remain expensive, from
$250,000 to $500,000. Similar but lower cost devices are in the
technology demonstration stage at Autodesk Inc. of Sausalito, CA.
Autodesk, the producer of AutoCAD--the industry standard
computer-aided design software for IBM-PC platforms--plans to use
the devices as interfaces to its software products.
Although DataGloves and the DataSuit allow the user to interact
with the VR, the simulation does not provide the physical
feedback cues familiar to the user. A simulated ball has no
substance and slips through the fingers like mist.
The problem of providing physical feedback from a VR is slowly
yielding to creative solutions. Researchers at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill have converted a robot arm into a
device for providing primitive force feedback. The user operates
a pistol-like grip attached to the mechanical arm to manipulate
objects in the simulation. When the user attempts to move an
object, the arm moves the grip against the user's hand. The user
interprets this resistance as coming from the object in the
simulation. Led by Prof. Frederick Brooks of the UNC Computer
Science Dept., UNC is applying this feedback technology to help
scientists obtain a better understanding of the way molecules fit
together (molecular docking problems). The user 'feels' the
forces associated with moving the molecules against each other,
while watching computer-generated images of the molecules in
motion.
Another UNC innovation combines a modified treadmill with
handlebars, producing a system that allows the user to stroll
through a VR. Users can journey through a model of the UNC
campus, using the handlebars for steering, without worrying about
running into walls. Interfaced with an electron or scanning
tunneling microscope, this technology could also be used to
'walk' across the surface of an integrated circuit.
[Editor's note: For more recent information, see the article on the
UNC Nanomanipulator project in Update 25.]
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Margaret Minsky has
been working to create a device that provides feedback for
virtual textures. A prototype device is based upon a pencil-like
stylus. To 'feel' the texture of an object modeled in the VR, the
user runs the stylus over the object's surface. The sensation is
similar to running a pencil over coarse sandpaper or over a china
plate.
 Air
Force researchers have also used piezoelectric buzzers to provide
limited tactile feedback from a VR. The buzzers are mounted
inside special gloves, and activated when the user's hand is
moved through a plane in space. Because the user perceives the
plane as a penetrable wall of pressure, this technique could be
used to delineate a simulation's physical boundaries.
Although much innovation is still needed for realistic physical
feedback, aural feedback and oral command interfaces are proving
extremely useful in VR. By adding speakers to their display
helmet, Air Force researchers found that directional sound cues
could enhance a VR with valuable information. For example,
positional sound cues could provide the locations of threat
aircraft without interrupting the pilot. Speaker-independent
speech recognition systems are now widely available; adding a
microphone allows the user to control the VR with spoken
commands.
Applications of VR interface technology are nearly endless. Prof.
Thomas Furness, Director of the University of Washington's Human Interface
Technology Laboratory, sees VR interfaces as an important
component in developing and controlling nanomachinery. He is
currently working to develop a VR interface for controlling a
micromachined surgical robot. A surgeon will control an onboard
surgical laser, using VR displays to operate on delicate tissues.
NASA is considering equipping space suits with VR to provide
astronauts access to control panels and technical information
while away from the shuttle. A ground-based engineer could become
'tele-present' in the astronaut's VR, providing critical design
information while the astronaut works to repair a damaged
satellite. VR could even make conventional space travel more
economical by replacing weighty instrument panels with virtual
displays.
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of VR technology is that it
provides a new medium for working with computers, a medium with
few limits. VR technology can break down the barriers that limit
computer utilization, making complicated systems more accessible.
Empowering people with better support tools will result in
greater productivity and faster progress, accelerating our
advance into an era of nanotechnology.
David Gagliano is a software engineer at BDM International and
VP of Nanotechnology Group Inc., a Seattle-based information
services firm.
Technology
Fiction (Part I)
by John G. Cramer
Mainstream fiction is often represented as valuable to its
readers because it deepens our insights, heightens our
sensitivities, sharpens our perceptions, and broadens our
understanding of the human condition in the world as it is today.
By extension of the same argument, reading many works of science
fiction can be said to prepare us to live not in the present, but
in the future. SF is the literature of change, holding up the
mirror of a hypothetical future that may be compared with the
present, allowing contrast of what is with what could
be. SF stimulates us to think about change and thus prepares
us to live with change. This is particularly true when the change
is the result of a technological revolution.
Nanotechnology is a technological revolution not yet here, an
evolving technology that has not yet come to fruition, a series
of breakthroughs waiting to unfold from the presently
exponentiating progress in molecular biology, in
microelectronics, and in nanometer-scale microscopy. A few with
imagination and keen vision can see nanotechnology looming on the
horizons of our civilization, a great storm cloud that promises a
thorough soaking with the warm rain of enhanced capabilities, but
also brings the strong winds of massive change.
Nanotechnology will, in time, give us the ability to design and
produce from the atomic level up almost anything we desire:
wonder drugs, marvelous tools, machines, computers, vehicles, and
habitats. Factories and manufacturing will become obsolete. All
production, heavy or light, will be reduced to a problem of
software which, once developed, can be used again and again
within the usually generous limits of available resources. When
this technological revolution has gone to completion our
labor-and production-and information-based society will of
necessity have been altered so radically that it is difficult to
imagine even its shape. What central aspect of out present
society would not be mutated or devalued by
nanotechnology?
In the present inquiry we'll examine the treatment of
nanotechnology in science fiction. We'll call the fictionalized
version nanotek to distinguish it from the real thing.
While there have been numerous SF treatments of various aspects
of biotechnology and genetic engineering, the vast potential of
nanotek as fiction was largely ignored until the publication of K. Eric Drexler's visionary Engines of Creation
(Doubleday, 1986). Drexler described nanotechnology and brought
its implications into clear focus. Now, with an ever-increasing
tempo, SF writers are beginning to use nanotek themes in their
fiction and to depict its impact. In the present overview, we'll
examine what several SF writers have guessed and extrapolated
about the shape of fictional nanotek futures.
First, however, I want to discuss some perhaps obvious aspects of
SF writing. There are basic incompatibilities between good story
telling and accurate prophecy. A good story needs conflict and
dramatic tension. A fictional technology with too much power and
potential, too much "magic", can spoil the tension and
suspense. The "future" as depicted in an SF story
should be recognizably like the present to maintain contact with
the reader. Most SF stories depict straightforward extrapolations
from the present or the past, with relatively few truly radical
changes, so that the reader is not lost in a morass of
strangeness. To achieve good characterization the writer must
focus on a small group of people, yet most real revolutions,
technological or otherwise, involve thousands of key players. The
intelligence and personality integration of fictional characters
cannot be much higher than that of the writer, yet enhanced
intelligence may be an important aspect of the nanotechnology
revolution to come.
The track record of SF writers as prophets, operating within
these constraints, has not been impressive. The future, as has
emerged, has rarely borne much resemblance to the near-future SF
that preceded it. There has not been a global nuclear war,
despite the vast popularity of the post-holocaust setting in SF.
No SF stories, to my knowledge, have accurately predicted AIDS,
or Supernova 1987A, or the meltdown of the iron curtain, or junk
bonds and leveraged buyouts, or Dan Quayle, or most of the other
things that have shaped our recent history.
The nanotechnology revolution, when it comes, will not be bound
by these storytelling constraints. It will almost certainly be a
broadly based international effort pushed forward on many fronts
by armies of scientists, engineers, and technicians working in
cooperation and in competition. The chances of a single hero
making a pivotal discovery in isolation are small. The impacts
will also occur on a broad front, affecting every facet of
everyday life. Since the realistic scenario for the
nanotechnology revolution probably doesn't make a good story, we
shouldn't expect SF to predict our nanotechnology future.
Nevertheless, it's of value to look at some nanotek scenarios
used in SF.
One of the first SF stories to describe what might be loosely
called nanotek is Theodore Sturgeon's much-anthologized
"Microcosmic God" (Astounding, 1941). The
protagonist, James Kidder, is a biochemist who, by establishing
the conditions for a speeded-up form of natural selection,
"evolves" the Neoterics, a tiny race of
super-intelligent creatures. The Neoterics have an accelerated
metabolism which permits them to accomplish any task very
rapidly. Kidder causes them to solve problems for him by
subjecting them to selected external forces that can cause death
and destruction.
Soon the Neoterics are producing a string of inventions and
discoveries that make Kidder a very rich man in our society. To
the Neoterics, however, he is a cruel and capricious God. Finally
the clever Neoterics develop an impenetrable shield that isolates
them from their "God," allowing them to continue their
progress in unknown directions. The human race is left to wait
nervously for the day when the Neoterics lower their shield and
emerge.
Sturgeon's Neoterics were small (sub-millimeter in size?), but
not nanometer-scale molecular machines, and Kidder's control of
them was more at the level of coercion than of programming;
further, they are evolved rather than designed. If there is a
warning in Sturgeon's scenario, it is that evolution, as opposed
to design, may be a dangerous path for developing nanomachines
because it is difficult to control.
Another early SF story that anticipated some aspects of
nanotechnology is James Blish's "Surface Tension" (Galaxy,
1952). A seed-ship, sent from Earth to spread human life in
suitable planets of nearby star systems, has crash-landed on
Hydrot, an ocean planet of the Tau Ceti system which has only one
small swampy continent containing no higher life forms. The crew
is dying. As their last act they create a completely new form of
humanity, tiny men and women reduced to protozoan size. They seed
the pools and puddles of Hydrot with this new edition of the
human race.
The story proper describes the adventures of one group of these
micro-humans that has just mastered the biotechnology which
enables it to travel from one pool to another. The nanotechnology
here, as in "Microcosmic God" concerns the creation of
intelligent microscopic creatures. In "Surface
Tension," however, the theme concerns gaining control over a
hostile environment, not loss of control as in the Sturgeon work.
The protagonists have entered an age of discovery which will only
end when they have conquered their planet, and indeed their
"voyage" from one puddle to another packs more
adventure, excitement, and sense of wonder than would the
discovery of a new star system. "Surface Tension" is a
refreshingly upbeat view of the the universality of human nature,
even in humans reduced to microscopic size.
[See Part
II in Update 9.]
John
G. Cramer is a Professor of Physics at the
University of Washington, Seattle, and author of Twistor,
a near-future hard-SF novel published in hardcover by William
Morrow & Company in March 1989. His science-fact column,
"The
Alternate View," is published bi-monthly in Analog
Science Fiction/Science Fact Magazine.
Compuserve
Access
We receive many inquiries regarding electronic bulletin board
systems on nanotechnology: the best at present is the sci.nanotech newsgroup on the Usenet
network. It is a moderated discussion group on the topic of
nanotechnology having about 5000 readers. We've been informed by
FI member John Papiewski that the Compuserve computer network has
recently enabled access to the Internet system, which is
connected to the Usenet system. Presumably Compuserve users can
now access sci.nanotech.
Others can gain access through the WELL (voice number
415-332-4335), Portal (408-973-9111), or other commercial
services. Accessing through the WELL has an additional benefit:
help in learning to use Usenet, which is not particularly
user-friendly. A three-page article in the Winter 1989 Whole
Earth Review explains the Usenet system, gives a list of
phone numbers for free access, and references a book to get you
started on Usenet; contact us if you have trouble obtaining the
article from your library. For further information on
sci.nanotech, contact the moderator, Josh Hall, at josh@aramis.rutgers.edu.
From Foresight Update 8, originally
published 15 March 1990.
Foresight thanks Dave Kilbridge for converting Update 8 to
html for this web page.
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