An interrogative visualization environment for large-scale engineering simulations

摘要

An interrogative visualization environment is described for the interactive display and querying of large datasets. The environment combines a web-based intelligent agent facility with a visualization engine. The intelligent agent facility (IAF) incorporates a rule-based expert system for natural-language understanding, voice and text input facilities, a hierarchical clickable command list, an interface for multimodal devices such as menu-based wireless handheld devices and gesture recognition devices, and human-like avatars acting as virtual assistants. The IAF interacts with, and controls, the visualization engine through a TCP/IP network socket interface. The environment enables multiple users using a variety of interaction modes and devices to effectively browse through large amounts of data, focus on and query interesting features, and more easily comprehend and make use of the data. Application of the environment to the visualization of engineering simulations is described. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.