Project GROPE-Haptic Displays for Scientific Visualization

摘要

We began in 1967 a project to develop a Haptic + display for 6-D force fields ofinteracting protein molecules. We approached it in four stages: a 2-D system, a 3-D system tested with a simple task, a 6-D system tested with a simple task, and a full 6-D molecular docking system, our initial goal. This paper summarizes the entire project--the four systems, the evaluation experiments, the results, and our observations. The molecular docking system results are new. Our principal conclusions are: Haptic display as an augmentation to visual display can improve perception and understanding both of force field and of world models populated with impenetrable objects. Chemists using GROPE-III can readily reproduce the true docking positions for drugs whose docking is known (but not to them) and can find very good docks for drugs whose true docks are unknown. The present tool promises to yield new chemistry research results; it is being actively used by research chemists. (js)