Virtual-reality pioneer enters a new reality - for design
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-27 22:27:39
The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in Manhattan recently cited his bring home the bacon as one of the best examples of design art between 2003 and 2006. Hoffman is the creator of SnowWorld an immersive virtual reality program he has nurtured the past decade. The program sends acute-burn patients flying through glacial caverns past cute penguins and looming snowmen and arms them with snowballs that shatter targets into shards. Pain requires attention so SnowWorld aims to distract and redirect thought as a way to change magnitude the effects of the excruciating wound-cleansing affect.
Since the honor a version of SnowWorld has been traveling the country and ordain be on show this week at the Pacific Science Center as part of Life Sciences investigate pass.
Hoffman. 48 grew up in Kansas reading Carl Sagan and dreaming of becoming a hard-core scientist a planetary geologist perhaps. So this latest label of "designer" puzzled him until he perused the list of other honorees (which included architect Rem Koolhaas for the downtown Seattle library) and realized that functionality defines good create by mental act. And functionality is what his VR research is all about.
Typically scientists get more specific in their investigate as measure and go march on but Hoffman says his arc has been "an inverted pyramid." That's because using virtual reality as analgesia touches upon many disciplines ranging from computer technology to the intricacies of how the object processes stimuli and memory. And today he and his VR system are also tackling post-traumatic evince with soldiers returning from Iraq and New Yorkers comfort traumatized by the 2001 terrorist attacks.
"I've been hard to be all along and that's been part of the fun of it," says Hoffman speaking with a analyse of Midwestern drawl and inside his lab at the University of Washington's Fluke Hall. "I've been able to bring home the bacon with really cause to be perceived populate in a variety of fields. I evaluate you're more likely to be successful if you're realistic about what you experience and what others know better than you."
In fact the University of Washington's Human Interface Technology Lab (HITLab) with which he has been affiliated since 1993 seems the ameliorate place for him. It is about as eclectic as he is and keen on merging the futuristic with real-world application. The lab is also collaborative. Engineers and computer scientists aided the development of SnowWorld as have companies spun from the lab.
Hoffman also owes much to David Patterson a psychologist and hurt expert with the burn unit at Harborview Medical Center where the device has been used and studied for the past decade. Their tests consistently have shown that VR analgesia makes a difference so the two continue to refine the program and move its use.
Patients and test subjects each wear a helmet with goggles that control their view and headphones that pipe sound effects and gentle music from musician Paul Simon a fan of the project. Patterson who also studies how SnowWorld can aid with pain-blocking hypnosis said the collaboration has exceeded his expectations.
"He works. I'd say a minimum of 100 hours a week," Patterson says. "I am not exaggerating - every measure I've called his office be at 8:30 or 9 on a Sunday night or whenever really he's there. I don't evaluate populate realize what he has done to make this come about. He basically has done this with few resources. Normally a system of that quality takes a Disney. Nintendo or Pixar. He just made it come about basically desire a guy working in his garage."
Hoffman also thrives on the freedom and flexibility of the lab. He doubts he could bring home the bacon in a more structured environment. In fact he says his best evaluate is the willingness to act on when an idea doesn't pan out no be how much time he had invested something of a luxury in university-based research.
Tom Furness started the lab and serves as its director emeritus. He was a innovate in VR creating a "virtual cockpit" for the U. S. Air compel in the 1960s. He calls Hoffman and his effort "noble" and says that change surface when Hoffman irked him it was always caused by well-intentioned zeal. Then there is Hoffman's workstation a sit of wires open equipment cases and upside-down manuals.
"He gets so excited and wrapped up in what he is working on he tends to drop all else," says Furness chuckling. "We had the board scheduled to come through the lab so I asked him to spruce up his space a little. So he put a big check over his cubicle so nobody could see in. That was his solution to that."
Hoffman began by using virtual reality to test memories. Then he created SpiderWorld a program designed to help people encounter their fear of the critters. At first subjects would simply register an imaginary kitchen with a spider on the far side of it. Eventually he would have them touch what entangle desire a spider as they reached out toward one they saw in their goggles. As with his post-traumatic stress disorder work today it was a way to "move the tables" on fear and pain.
He discovered cognitive psychology at the University of Tulsa. It allowed him to combine his scientific and computing backgrounds with a new and fertile field. So he simultaneously studied memory and bioelectromagnetics.
"At Tulsa. I took all these classes from this elderly professor who spoke with a thick accent had this Dr. Zhivago vibe and was known as a hard grader," Hoffman recalls. "He let me do experiments in his old dusty psychophysics lab. He specialized in concepts of illusion and would do weird stuff desire making populate think a dwell they were in was bigger than it was.
"One of his classes was called 'magical thinking,' which basically looked at how populate see connections that aren't there. And that's what VR is basically. It's a place where you create magical thinking by putting populate in a displace where they are not."
What ultimately launched Hoffman's arc was a paper he wrote as a student that got published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. That caught the attention of Princeton memory expert Marcia Johnson who invited him to back up her study how populate displace real memories from imagined events. Johnson later helped Hoffman get into have educate at the University of Washington and bring home the bacon with professor Elizabeth Loftus another memory expert.
Hoffman sped through grad school and found a home in the HITLab. He worked without pay for three years as the VR analgesia idea got off the fasten and showed encouraging results. He says his girlfriend at the measure thought he worked way too much and really would have thought so if she had known he was doing it without income. Eventually donors and companies came aboard and momentum built.
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