A Java User Interface for the Virtual Human

A human simulation environment, the Virtual Human (VH), is under development at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Virtual Human connects three-dimensional (3D) anatomical models of the body with dynamic physiological models to investigate a wide range of human biological and physical responses to stimuli. The authors have utilized the Java programming language to develop a flexible user interface to the VH. The Java prototype interface has been designed to display dynamic results from selected physiological models, with user control of the initial model parameters and ability to steer the simulation as it is proceeding. Taking advantage of Java's Remote Method Invocation (RMI) features, the interface runs as a Java client that connects to a Java RMI server process running on a remote server machine. The RMI server can couple to physiological models written in Java, or in other programming languages, including C and FORTRAN. Future versions of the interface will be linked to 3D anatomical models of the human body to complete the development of the VH.