THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 28, 1995 TAG: 9502280267
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
Participants watch as a ruby-red string of laser light snakes across a model of a human head. A digital camera tracks the scan, feeding data to an interconnected personal computer.
Newly digitized, the head then appears on adjacent television and computer screens, where it is rotated 360 degrees and otherwise moved about. In a fit of whimsy, designers crown the head on the TV screen with a red and white cap.
``You have an object and you scan it in,'' explains Han Bao , an Old Dominion University professor of manufacturing engineering. ``You can scale it up or scale it down,'' he says. The end result: ``a new product.''
The direct digital feed of three-dimensional shapes into computer systems is neither routine nor cheap. That's what the organizers of ODU's TechnOart Center want to change by drawing upon the collective savvy of area artists, engineers and the business community.
Late last week, 30 or so businesspeople and ODU faculty members were invited to TechnOart's inauguration. The center is part of ODU's engineering school. It will concentrate on ways to develop and apply what is known as noncontact 3-D design and manufacturing. Founders say that the program is the first of its kind in the state.
TechnOart is the brainchild of graduate student Kevin Gallup and several ODU faculty members who want to dramatically shorten and improve manufacturing cycles. The center could help firms lower production costs and ``reverse engineer'' expensive, outdated spareparts that otherwise would have to be specially ordered or tooled from scratch.
``The design process is technological. It's also artistic,'' said one organizer, Jim Flowers, an assistant professor of occupational and technical studies. ``In the past we've been too compartmentalized. This is an example of integration.''
``Anything that gives us a competitive edge to bring good things to market faster deserves scrutiny,'' said attendee Jerry Elder, assistant manager of manufacturing engineering for Canon in Newport News. ``Product lives are getting shorter. This is pretty interesting.''
Gallup, a sculptor-engineer, drew a crowd with a model of a five-foot-tall gorilla. Gallup is building a gargantuan 50-foot-tall version made of steel and covered with fiberglass that, by this summer, will tower over the grounds at Ocean Breeze Park off General Booth Boulevard in Virginia Beach.
Gallup's gorilla comes courtesy of a $300 digital file that he bought from a Canadian company. The file provided the necessary mathematical detail that made possible the construction of a much bigger sculpture.
``I decided to employ the power of a computer to build the thing,'' he said.
Using digital files, TechnOartists such as Gallup could one day turn out unusual soda bottle designs, more comfortable medical prostheses, even provide to physicians patient information for ``virtual surgery'' which would be conducted over high-speed computer networks like the Internet.
Old Dominion plans to modify some of its engineering courses to include the more interdisciplinary TechnOart approach in the education of future engineers and technicians.
``We can educate people in industry,'' ODU's Flowers said. ``We can train engineers and technicians to use it (noncontact digitizing) here or to use and purchase or lease a system on their own property. We will expose this technology to an immense audience.''
TechnOart advocates will have to solve cost and scale problems to appeal to a wide variety of industrial customers. Digitizing systems that use lasers, for instance, cost far more than cheaper and time-consuming contact digitizing counterparts, which rely on physical contact with an object's surface.
Another challenge will be to devise large-scale digitizers that could, for example, scan in the shape of an existing building to enable architects to speedily design additions.
``I'm impressed that they're coming out to the business community to try to get our involvement and participation,'' said Elder of Canon. ``Can I go back to the plant and say this is ready today? No. But it's something we need to stay real close to. The potential is great.'' ILLUSTRATION: JIM WALKER/Staff color photos
Padmanabhan Soundar, left, a doctoral student at Old Dominion
University, and Han Bao, a professor of manufacturing engineering.
Peter White, a computer animator in ODU's visual arts department.
by CNB