Duration: 12 months) Starting date: May 2014 Project Contact: Antonio Falcão (ajf@uninova.pt)
Technical officer: Peter van der Plas
Financing:
This project is financed by ESA under the ITI (Triangle Initiative)
programme. ESA contract 4000111155/14/NL/SC
IVELA - Interactive Visualization Environment for Large Archives
Project Summary
In an age when automated massive data analysis is becoming a mainstream
activity, the task of visualization is essential for the understanding
and critical interpretation of data and results - for science and
mission analysis and control alike. Particularly, in Space related
activities, most of the data leading to new scientific discoveries
are expected to come from online archives of automatic instruments
and all-sky surveys.
The main objective of IVELA is to develop technologies to tackle two
main challenges: how to interactively visualize a large amount of
data and how to perform complex selections in 3D environments.
The emergence of widespread 3D interaction devices such as Microsoft
Kinect and Leap Motion, brought a hope that perhaps this problem can
be soon addressed.
Those devices use machine learning algorithms with image processing
and fusion, for enabling the computer to recognize humans and to perform
motion capture.
However, for effective usage in data selection, the system should
also be able to infer the user's motion intention. It should be able
to answer questions as: does the user want to select a sphere, or
an arbitrarily complex region? Hence, IVELA will recognize gestures
that humans intuitively use for data selection and volume definition.
This will involve the adoption of machine learning algorithms (as
Support Vector Machines), to infer the regions from the user's gesture.
Currently, there is no scientific, engineering or mission analysis
software tool that allows the user to perform data selection of complex
regions in the 3D space using such human-computer interaction devices.
Finally, even if IVELA is a demonstrator for a 3D interactive visualization
environment for large datasets such as Gaia and space debris datasets,
its design will be as general as possible, and it should be easily
adapted for the visualization of other space data sources.
Video demo #1 - functionalities of the visualisation client tool
Video demo #2 - interaction using the Leap Motion device
The project tasks are:
WP1: preliminary studies
WP2: visualization demonstrator infrastructure
WP3: advanced data selection in 3D
WP4: system integration
WP5: benchmarking
WP6: management
Specifically, UNINOVA will participate in all tasks and will be
responsible for WP3.
Apoio FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia no âmbito
da Unidade de Investigação CTS - Centro de Tecnologia e Sistemas, referência
UIDB/00066/2020
