The Buffalo News

SEE IT, THEN BUILD IT UB IS BUILDING A MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR COMPUTER GRAPHICS CENTER THAT CAN HELP AREA MANUFACTURERS ENGINEER NEW PRODUCTS

Published on July 15, 2001
Author:    FRED O. WILLIAMS - News Business Reporter
© The Buffalo News Inc.

First came the supercomputer center, whose mainframes attack research problems with mathematical models.

Now the University at Buffalo is building a companion center for computer graphics, where researchers can see, shape, and virtually step into the models they've created. "They can design anything from the parts for a machine to the whole factory," UB President William R. Greiner said.

The New York State Center for Engineering Design and Industrial Innovation or NYSCEDII got its start last year with a $2.5 million grant backed by the Assembly leadership. Another $2.5 million is allocated in the pending budget proposal.

Using the same graphical computers that create sophisticated Hollywood animation, NYSCEDII's 3-D systems and virtual reality screens allow researchers to peer inside a pumping heart, walk through a digitally rendered factory, or take a simulated thrill ride on a theme park attraction.

Paired with the mainframe supercomputers nearby at UB's Center for Computational Research, the visualization center at the Amherst campus provides a rare combination of high-end research tools, Greiner said.

"For faculty that want to be involved in computational research, they'll find at UB one of the few places that's got it all," he said.

While scientists focus on the research leaps possible through computer visualization, backers of the center in the Assembly see economic benefits spreading outward from the campus.

"I would think that the marketing people (for the region) could make this part of their sales pitch to industry," said Assembly Majority Leader Paul Tokasz, D-Cheektowaga. Large manufacturers like Ford and GM are leaning heavily on computer visualization to speed product designs, he noted.

With a half-dozen high-end graphics computers made by SGI and Sun Microsystems, the center is today one of the top 20 or so academic visualization centers in the country, director Christina Bloebaum said. By year end, when construction of a room-sized virtual reality environment should be complete, the center will rank among the nation's top five.

Area companies as well as UB faculty can benefit from the technology, she said. Local companies including Praxair, Veridian and Moog have teamed with the center for help with engineering projects. Now, NYSCEDII is beginning a push to market itself more broadly as a research partner with local industry.

Working with the center, Moog Inc. hopes to develop simulator capabilities to enhance the value of its motion equipment, Vice President Richard Aubrecht said. The company makes servomotor-controlled platforms used in simulators and amusement park rides -- one of the platforms sits before a giant screen at the UB visualization center. Developing technology to synchronize the platform's motion with user controls and with the image on the screen is the goal of a joint research program that's being discussed, he said.

"It would be very difficult for us to do this elsewhere, because it does take close engineering relationships," Aubrecht said. "It is a good example of how the university can be a real help for business."

Smaller companies that couldn't begin to afford high-end graphics computers can partner with the center's researchers, gaining access to visualization equipment and to programming help in return for grants or hourly fees.

The unlikely spot of Ames, Iowa, became a magnet for corporate design offices after it became the host of Iowa State's sophisticated visualization center, Bloebaum said.

"At Iowa State, there were actually companies that plopped down there because that center is there," she said.

Bloebaum, whose own field is aerospace engineering, said that the idea for the visualization center gelled in 1999 when Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver addressed the engineering department's University-Industry Day. During the showcase event for area academic-industry partnerships, engineering Dean Mark Karwan pitched the idea of developing a visualization center. The first round of state funding came the following year.

To complete the center's plans for two room-sized virtual reality environments will take about another $10 million, Bloebaum said. Located in Norton Hall, NYSCEDII's visualization equipment can work in conjunction with projects on the supercomputers next door at the Center for Computation Research.

Projects aided by the center have attracted several million research dollars through federal science grants and other sources, she said.

Other universities are quickly upgrading their computer graphics capabilities to keep pace with the rapid use of computer modeling in research, according to Walter Stewart, a marketing director for SGI. The Mountain View, Calif., company formerly known as Silicon Graphics, makes visualization equipment used at NYSCEDII and other centers -- and by Hollywood animation shops that made the all-digital film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

"One of the biggest challenges in research today is the huge data sets involved in computer models," Stewart said.

Complex computer models like climate simulations are vastly easier to grasp on a 3-D map than a thick printout of figures.

Engineers have long used computer-aided design tools to draft part designs and building diagrams. The new generation of visualization tools lifts the two-dimensional drafts into larger 3-D scenes and virtual 360-degree environments that use animation to change over time.

The idea behind such "immersion" technology is that engineers can best work on some tasks -- such as the layout of a car's interior -- while surrounded by a digital representation of their subject. In a virtual car rendering, a designer crafting dashboard instruments can easily tell if they clash with vents or controls.

Much of engineering involves making trade-offs that effect cost and performance. Instead of building prototype after prototype, designers using visualization can quickly manipulate the digital twin of their subject, cutting time and costs from product development, Watson said. The technology has also spurred advances in medicine, he said. At Stanford University, visualization tools are creating animated models of an individual's vascular system based on MRI images. Surgeons using the digital model can measure the effects of different heart bypass on blood flow -- before they pick up a scalpel.

"You cannot imagine what you can accomplish with the technology until you start using it," Watson says.

HARRY SCULL Jr./Buffalo News
Christina Bloebaum, director of the NYSCEDII, holds 3-D glasses that
enable researchers to virtually walk through or look into objects,
such as the one on her computer screen.

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