Bi-manual interactive tools for cultural heritage researchers

The availability of intuitive, user-friendly and specialized software to work with 3D models of cultural heritage artifacts is as important as the availability of low-cost and robust data acquisition techniques for the adoption of digitized 3D models in cultural heritage research. As recent developments in 3D scanning technologies have made the digitization of artifacts affordable; the amount of digitized models available for research increases rapidly. Consequently the need for specialized software for cultural heritage research and practice on 3D models becomes more apparent. The lack of spatial measurement tools familiar to cultural heritage experts in traditional 3D modeling packages motivated us to create a simple, freely available, and extensible measurement tools system, CH Toolbox, which was designed exclusively for cultural heritage research. The proposed system visualizes digitized models of artifacts in 3D and allows the user to analyze the pieces using a spaceball and mouse driven bi-manual interface. We describe here the components of the CH Toolbox system, specificially the virtual tape measure, caliper, rim chart and a surface area estimation tool. Additionally, we present justification for CH Toolbox's bi-manual interaction scheme according to Guiard's Kinematic Chain model for asymmetric human skilled bi-manual actions.