A 3D User Interface for the Active Reflector of Large Radio Telescope

Author

Zhiguang, Yang ; Qiming, Wang

Author_Institution

Chinese Acad. of Sci., Beijing

fYear

2007

fDate

5-8 Aug. 2007

Firstpage

3208

Lastpage

3213

Abstract

A 3D user interface is developed to solve the monitoring problem of the active reflector of large radio telescope, which could show the movement and health state of the active reflector via Open Graphics Library (OpenGL). To accomplish such an interface, the distributed environment is simulated by 4 PCs that are connected to a switched Ethernet. Network Time Protocol (NTP) is employed to synchronize the clocks of PCs over Ethernet, and the Vertex Buffer Object (VBO) extension in OpenGL is introduced to accelerate the display speed of the active reflector. Users could manage and control the large radio telescope directly by interacting with this 3D user interface.

Keywords

astronomy computing; graphical user interfaces; local area networks; radiotelescopes; synchronisation; 3D user interface; Network Time Protocol; Open Graphics Library; OpenGL; Vertex Buffer Object extension; active reflector; clock synchronization; distributed environment; large radio telescope; monitoring problem; switched Ethernet; Clocks; Ethernet networks; Graphics; Libraries; Monitoring; Personal communication networks; Protocols; Radio astronomy; Synchronization; User interfaces; 3D interface; OpenGL; active reflector; large radio telescope;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Mechatronics and Automation, 2007. ICMA 2007. International Conference on

Conference_Location

Harbin

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-0828-3

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-0828-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICMA.2007.4304075

Filename

4304075