Multi-Modal 3D Geographical Information Systems with Haptic Interface

The objective of the research reported here is to develop a Multimodal 3D Geographical Information Systems (GIS) with haptic interface. In 3D environments, the complex spatial relationship between the entities and the influence of the light and shadow make operations of objects difficult and inefficient. Haptic interaction is then considered as an effective auxiliary method. We studied the feasibility of multi-modal 3D GIS with haptic interaction and then conducted the experiments of applying the haptic display into bivariate thematic 3D maps to get evaluations of haptic interaction quantitatively. The main results of the study indicate that adding haptic interaction into GIS can improve the performance of the 3D GIS apparently. The results of this work could be used as a foundation for future study on developing more sophisticated GIS with haptic interface.