A study of an operator assistant for virtual space

A method to assist an operator to place an object on a surface in a virtual environment without any force feed-back tool is described and evaluated. The method used is to apply an attractive power to two faces that are likely to be attached. The system checks the distance of these faces and assists the operator by attaching two faces whose distance is less than a certain threshold. The real time calculation is achieved by limiting the number of faces that can be attached. Using this interface, the operator can move an object in some predefined planes. An experiment shows that the method is effective when the operator is requested to precisely place a virtual object in a certain location.<<ETX>>