Entertainment Computing – ICEC 2017

We have been working on the creation of media art utilizing technologies. As an extension of our previous research, this time we have focused on the visualization of behaviors of fluid. This area has been named as “fluid mechanics” or “fluid dynamics” and there have been various researches in this area. As some of the fluid motion look beautiful, there is another research area called “visualization of fluid motion.”However most of these results show only stable fluid behaviors and lacks of unstable or in other words unpredictable behaviors that would be substantial for the creation of art. Therefore, to create various unstable or unpredictable fluid behaviors in trials to create artworks, we have introduced several new methods such as usage of dry ice, injection of paints into fluid, and usage of air gun to create an explosive effect. This paper proposes the basic concept of new video art called “Genesis” based on the visualization of fluid dynamics, describes details of the above mentioned three ideas that were introduced to create unpredictable fluid dynamics based phenomena, and then describes details of new media art we have created combining these ideas.

We examine Bubble Clouds composed of a bubble cluster for a three-dimensional display. A bubble cluster is flexible in that its shape can be modified and it can float in the air with helium gas confinement of the bubbles. By varying the density of the bubble clusters, we project images onto the bubbles without requiring fog confinement or use of special equipment. Moreover, we investigate whether a soap bubble cluster can become interactive by electrifying it.

The development of computer technologies gives rise to a revolution in all socio-cultural practices, including arts and literature. In terms of poetry, for example, readers have now access to new lyrical experiences either through emerging poetic genres or through so-far unimagined approaches to traditional ones. Lots of research has been done in the field of Computer Science on technical issues of computer-generated poetry, but little on the aesthetic impacts of having poems produced by machines. Therefore, we herein propose a multidisciplinary literary analysis of poems produced by the tool Peter’s Haiku Generator, in order to discuss how software design decisions can affect literary aspects and the aesthetic effects of those poems.

In order to produce a music sketch (a combination of melody and accompaniment) in the beginning of musical composition, it is effective to use a composition means with high portability capable of inputting a melody in real time. In this paper, we propose a system that enables a beginner of musical composition or instrument easily and readily to create a music sketch by constructing a system capable of inputting a natural melody on a smartphone in real time in concert with accompaniment. In addition, we implemented the proposed system as an application to evaluate the proposed system through extensive use experiments by releasing it to the general public, showing the effectiveness of the proposed system in musical composition.

InvisibleSound is a mobile application software developed for blind people to compose music. The app’s handling is adapted to the needs and requirements of blind people. As a control mechanism to navigate through the app’s functions we tested two modes: a common swipe control and an interactive motion control by moving the phone. Also publishing and sharing the composed songs on a shared server is possible. The app was created with Unity and is available for Android and iOS.

We propose a system that turns everyday soft objects, such as cushions, into touch interfaces in a non-intrusive manner. The belt type sensor modules developed in this study, which can be attached to the outside of soft objects, comprise several photo reflective sensors to measure the reflection intensity from an object by emitting infrared light (IR LED). When the light is irradiated to a material with the same reflection coefficient, a reflection intensity that is inversely proportional to the square of the distance can be obtained. Our method uses the sensor modules to measure the change in distance from the sensor to the surface of the soft object, and the touch position is estimated using a Support Vector Machine (SVM). To evaluate our method, we measured the accuracy when touching nine points on a cushion. Using existing everyday soft objects, it is possible to create interfaces that not only blend into the living space naturally but also match the preferences of each user.

Evaluating digital games is challenging since success is defined by enjoyment and gameplay experience, two factors that are hard to measure. While several works presented methods to analyze these factors, it is rare to find studies that evaluate the impact that the input methods (gamepads, touch, keyboards) have on the experience. We now introduce an exploratory user experience and usability study that compares two radically different game controllers: a mobile touch-based controller and a traditional gamepad, using subjective and objective user data. Results of this exploratory study indicate that while the general user experience and usability were similar with both controllers, the physiological measures indicate that the emotions differ between interfaces. In our final thoughts, we provide insights about how to evaluate and compare the experience with game controllers.

We propose a tangible user interface combining pop-up cards with conductive ink printing technique. To fulfill our purpose, we developed software that can automatically calculate the circuit layouts on the pop-up card. The circuit layout is made to have the shortest path by considering the thickness of the layout, the space between circuit lines, and that the layout should not crossover cut lines. The crease pattern and layouts are printed separately when the layouts are calculated. By attaching electronic elements, we can make an interactive pop-up card. In a use trial, we confirmed that even novice could create original interactive pop-up card with our software and use such card to build an application. Furthermore, we demonstrated the effectiveness of our method by making and showing example applications using the interactive pop-up card interface.

In recent years, wearable devices such as Google Glass and Apple Watch are spreading in society. However, their devices cannot be used the following types of situations. In the case of user wants to quieten children being noisy in a public place, the user wants to speak clearly in a presentation despite being nervous. Therefore, wearable devices are important for the user to control his/her actions. This research aims to achieve involuntary and non-perceptual control of the user’s actions, without inflicting mental stress. The first stage of the research is to design and implement a voice feedback system for voice control. This device is composed of an environmental sound measurement microphone, a speaking voice input microphone, a switch for the white noise function, a minicomputer, and a volume amplifier circuit. A first function of the device change the user’s voice feedback from earphones by the user’s voice loudness. Moreover, a second function of the device that output white noise add in order to consciously increase the use’s voice loudness. In this paper, I describe the proposed vocal volume control and the implementation method of the proposed system.

In Face-to-Face communication, his or her face is an important part that decides the impression of a person because a person estimates the personality of the interlocutor from the features of the face of the interlocutor. Therefore, we made a hypothesis own impression and personality of giving to others by changing the own face freely. Then we proposed the e2-Mask that a mask-type display that synchronizes with facial expressions and substitutes an avatar for a human face.

One of the strategies proposed by the World Health Organization to promote a healthy aging, also known as “Active Aging”, where the maintenance of health and Independence in old age is identified as a good quality of physical, mental and social life, are the relevant factors concerning the preservation of the potential of achievement and development in this stage of life. Due to the common occurrence of mental disorders in older people, which are caused by many factors, the neuropsychological assessments form a part of the psychological clinical studies, where new approaches and techniques are resulting in tests that have been significantly progressing, although the principles in which these tests are based remain unchanged. In order to make those tests less tiring, and more relaxing and engaging, the Serious Games appeared, aiming to adapt the current neuropsychological tests to the context of videogaming and Digital Games, in order to achieve a better performance of the participants during the assessment and to enable a better data collection to the medical evaluation Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate whether a serious game can be a useful instrument to be used in cognitive assessment and stimulation, and which gameplay indicators could be potential proxies of cognitive measurement.

The present study explores persuasive and interventional strategies for designing and evaluating low-threshold browser games that adequately aim for affording prejudice-reducing social impact in everyday life scenarios. Our investigation was guided by the premise that a covert persuasion approach is suited for also reaching out to otherwise adverse attitude holders. Building on a framework for embedding change-related messages into games by their design, and in combination with rhetorical techniques and subversive strategies from queer-theoretical philosophy and social psychology, we modified an existing impactful game about Coming Out so as to obfuscate its change-related content, and make it more approachable for a not-queer audience. The evaluation of the modified prototype suggests the efficacy of the employed strategies for facilitating and elevating emotional engagement based on group membership effects, which is linked to a greater potential for attitude change and prejudice reduction.

Active Ageing, the preservation of the potential for achievement and development in old age, is a societal concern and neuropsychological assessments are part of psychological clinical studies. Although approaches are based on stable principles, Serious Games with designs based on neuropsychological tests can enable data collection and analysis useful for medical evaluation. This study developed and tested a game (Sorting Sheep) to be applied in cognitive stimulation with older adults providing, at the same time, useful information about the performance of the player. Meaningful correlations have been found between aspects of performance and the standard MoCA test, when the game is calibrated for a population with cognitive conditions.

We developed a system that generates stories from hypothetical questions. Specifically, the stories are expressed in a knowledge base of the form “If Then.” The system allows users to create a story that has a synopsis different from the original story by changing the “If.” For example, if the user changes the appearance and personality of a character, the outline of the story also changes. We think that this process can help increase the creativity of the users of the system. This system was developed to help users visualize written stories as images and allows users to experience stories interactively. Evaluation experiments conducted on 21 children of elementary school fifth grade children showed that there was improvement in the children’s creative ability, demonstrating that the system is effective. Thus the system can be used as an idea creation tool for narrative generation as the process helps to increase the creativity of users.

In.line is a novel game based on a navigation system, called ARIANNA (pAth Recognition for Indoor Assisted NavigatioN with Augmented perception, [1]), primarily designed for visually impaired people permitting to navigate and find some points of interests in an indoor and outdoor environment by following a path painted or stuck on the floor. The aim of the game is twofold: (1) let the users learn and familiarize with the system, (2) improve blind people spatial skills to let them learn and acquire an allocentric spatial representation. The impact stands in the possibility of enhancing the social inclusion of a large part of the society that is increasing with the aging of the population by augmenting their autonomous mobility. The paper presents the concept design and preliminary evaluation of a game specifically designed for blind people. The evaluation has been performed via qualitative and quantitative tests.

Children spend numerous hours on the Internet daily. While online, they meet a great number of opportunities as well as risks. Of these risks, cyber bullying and privacy violations are of major concern, in addition to exploitation and child pornography. Our hypothesis is that the solution is not to keep children and teens away from the Internet, but to ensure that young citizens are empowered with the necessary knowledge and skill set to become critical consumers and creators of new secure and sustainable digital services and products. Our objective is to develop a knowledge and skill set base and offer learning through playful solutions for empowering children and young people with creative and critical digital skills, in an engaging and motivating way. The aim is to build on the method and lessons learns of Kodeløypa, one of the scientific offerings for children at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and the related scientific efforts made to empower a new generation of online users to avoid risks in the modern digital society. The project, SikkerhetsLøypa, is highly inter-disciplinary and spans across the fields of information security, user experience, software engineering, and computer science education. The scientific results of this project aims at strengthen education methods and practices in secure and privacy-aware behavior in the digital world.

In these days, there are many e-learning system for studying by yourself. In these systems, learner can make their own pacing in for each learning section. But many learner needs more shorter term pacing adjusted to individual motivation and feeling in one session. Many video learning system has lack of interaction. On the other hand, novel game type e-learning system can interact to learner. But, previous novel game system can not keep the prosody information. So this paper proposed new novel game system “NOVELICA” which segmented the lesson to conversation size. And you can easily see the head of conversation with no stress by using NOVELICA. We compared with NOVELICA to previous novel game system and video learning system. And we investigate how different in these 3 contents. Finally, we found that NOVELICA is tend to be less stressful and keeping arousal in learning mathematics.

This paper describes a visual effect dictionary that can visually express images of words used as modifiers, such as adjectives, onomatopoeia by adding 3D objects with a visual effect. This visual effect dictionary links words and visual effects for the target objects. The same modifier can have different meanings depending on the target object thus, an intelligent algorithm to select the visual effects is required. This dictionary can be used as communication support for images that are difficult to express only by modifier words such as adjectives, onomatopoeia. When multiple regression analysis was conducted in the questionnaire results, it was found that there are appropriate visual effects and inadequate visual effects depending on nouns.

Serious games are becoming more popular because they provide an opportunity for learning in a natural environment. Although many concepts included in cybersecurity awareness training are universal, many forms of training fail because they are based on rote learning and do not require users to think about security concepts. The main objective of this study is to design a candidate cybersecurity awareness training tool which provides an environment for helping users to understand security concepts while playing a game. To reach our goal, we applied a newly developed model, which is Activity Theory-based Model of Serious Games (ATMSG), to design our own game. According to the design, we implemented a game demo and assessed its gameplay. The results indicated that the story gameplay can help players improve their understanding of cybersecurity problems and resolutions.

Situational judgment in a ballgame is said to be more difficult to obtain than skills such as basic passing and shooting. However, by displaying the images seen by a player from a first person viewpoint, it is possible to have a user perform the actual sports action performed by the player and experience the same feeling. We developed a situational judgment training system for this purpose. In this research, we particularly aim to improve the user’s situational judgment ability and focus on learning situations in ballgames in which the user does not know how to move to get the ball. The results of evaluation experiments conducted with six subjects indicate that the gameplay of users improved such that they were consciously able to move and get the ball better than they had before using the system.

Digital Educational Games (DEGs) aim to provide motivating, personalized play experiences that blend learning and engagement, while addressing pedagogical requirements. The ultimate challenge is to enable and stimulate knowledge acquisition by creating rich environments that employ Entertainment Games (EGs) mechanics in order to accommodate learning objectives and support skills’ development. In recent years, the gap between EGs and DEGs has started to close, with studies looking not only into lessons learnt from EGs, but also into how EGs can be used in learning settings. This research analyses the possibility to integrate EGs mechanics into the pedagogical flows, in order to potentate learning. The paper further outline the design of a learning path that will be used as a unit on logistics and production means. The unit will be used for letting high school students explore functions of logistics and production (as a recruitment tool during the Open University days), as well as for the first introductionary course on production logistics.

We propose a virtual scuba diving system using an underwater head mounted display (UHMD). This system has two advantages. First, a strong sense of reality is obtained by combining the weightlessness obtained by diving with a highly immersive image presented by a waterproof UHMD. Second, the system is very versatile, such that a user can experience the system in easily accessible waters such as swimming pools or shallow water. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of the proposed system and the creation of underwater virtual reality (VR) content to provide a diving experience. The proposed system consists of the UHMD with a head tracking sensor, laptop PC, and a hose to protect the cables. The UHMD and laptop PC are connected by cables for power, communication, and video transmission. Each part is waterproof. The created VR content makes it possible to freely swim in the virtual undersea world by head tracking and operation of the controller. We conducted a pilot experiment to test the proposed system while users swam in a pool of about 4 m in depth. The UHMD was confirmed to have sufficient waterproofness at water depth of about 4 m. It is also suggested that it is possible to create the illusion that the water depth in the virtual underwater space is the user’s own water depth.

When we visually recognize food items, their color influences the impression of their taste, because the gustatory sense is affected by other senses such as smell and eyesight. In this study, in order to control the gustatory sense of human beings, we examined the influence on gustatory sense by giving a virtual chromatic transition of food through Head-Mounted Display. The experiment was conducted under six conditions that changed three factors: “before or after eating”, “viewing through HMD or naked eyes”, “with virtual chromatic transition or without”. As a result, we confirmed that the difference in the amount of visual information influenced the impression of food items before eating. It is expected to realize more applicative control of the gustatory sense by analyzing this difference.

Locomotion in virtual reality (VR) remains challenging due to limitations of common input methods. Sedentary input devices may endanger immersion, real-to-virtual world perception dissonance can lead to simulator sickness, and physical input devices such as framed walking dishes are often complex and expensive. We present a low-cost, easy to use, easy to manufacture, and easily portable device for locomotion in VR based on a hoverboard metaphor. Building on related work and our own iterative VR locomotion system designs we hypothesize that hoverboarding can provide a compelling and intuitive method for short- and long-distance locomotion in VR with a potential to reduce simulator sickness due to consistent and stable locomotion that corresponds well to the physical proprioception of the users while navigating VR. We discuss design iterations of our device prototypes, promising results from an early explorative evaluation, as well as ongoing continued work.

The perception of disruptive outside sound while being inside a virtual reality simulation can break the experience of presence. Even with noise cancelling headphones external sound cannot be blocked completely. In this paper, we present an acoustic compensation method to sustain the virtual illusion. We developed a testbed VR prototype that allows to classify real-life sound and to adapt the virtual world accordingly by activating pre-defined playable content. The application analyzes and classifies outside sound in real time and triggers a suitable in-game object that matches the outside sound. Our implementation is a first approach, we want to use it to further examine the possibility of adaptive audio to mask external disruptive sounds resulting in an enhanced VR experience.

The purpose of this study is the proposal of an erasure-oriented drawing style to develop the ability to copy images. Possible erasable parts of an existing illustration were inferred and classified. As a result, the erasure processes were divided into two types and regarded as erasure patterns in this study. Then, we created an illustration drawing support system that makes use of erasure method. By automatically performing part of erasure, we made the drawing and erasure processes of illustration easier to memorize. Also, using drawing songs as models, we supported memorization of the procedures from auditory sense.

Human-like behaviors are an important factor in achieving entertaining computer players. So far, the target of human-like behavior has been focused on actions in a game with the goal of winning. However, human behaviors might also be performed with other purposes not directly related to the game’s main objective. For example, in FPS games, some human players create illustrations or graffiti with a weapon (i.e., gun). In co-operative online FPS, when chat is not allowed in-game, some players shoot the nearest wall to warn an ally about danger. This kind of action for an indirect purpose is hard to reproduce with a computer player, but it is very important to simulate human behavior and to entertain human players. In this article, we present a survey of the possible actions in a game that are not directly related to the game’s main objective. Study cases of these behaviors are collected and classified by task and intention (i.e., warning, notification, provocation, greeting, expressing empathy, showing off, and self-satisfaction) and we discuss the possibility of reproducing such actions with a computer player. Furthermore, we show in experiments with multi-agent Q-learning that such actions with another purpose can emerge naturally.

This paper describes the design, and early evaluation of a scale aimed at assessing the believability of creatures in videogames. These creatures include all zoomorphic entities that do not qualify as fundamentally human-like, whether or not they have characteristics identifiable as anthropomorphic. The work is based on principles drawn from biology, animation, illustration and artificial intelligence. After developing the scale’s 46 original items, it was administrated as a Likert Scale questionnaire. The results were analyzed through Principal Component Analysis and they suggest that 26 items, out of the original 46, spread across 4 dimensions, could be used to evaluate creature believability.

DotA is one of the most attractive and influential MOBA games, which has been popular in many countries for over 10 years. It was designed for fun at first, however, after the emerge of DOTA2 it soon became the highest prize e-sports game. This paper analyzes the evolutionary changes of the DOTA2. The game refinement measure is employed for the assessment of game sophistication of DOTA2 series. The analyzing results show that the rules of DOTA2 have regularly been changed in its history to maintain an appropriate range of game refinement. We clearly see two directions during the evolutionary changes which are the skillfulness and popularity. Thus, the analysis makes it possible to overview these evolutionary changes of DOTA2 and find some drawbacks to be improved.

Kifu, which is a Japanese term for a game record for a shogi games, is considered as a special type of multi-dimensional time series data, because it consists of items indicating who moved a piece and where it was moved on a grid diagram. Because of its complexity, however, it is not easy for amateur or non-players of shogi to grasp or understand overall shogi games from it. In this study we suggest averages, variances, skewness of row numbers where pawns are put, numbers of times gold and silver generals and nights are moved, which are easily calculated and understandable without comprehensive knowledge of shogi game, as features of position of shogi games. And the usability of those features is shown by a result of discriminant analysis for winner of game based on those features. Further, a software for illustrating shogi postmortems using discriminant scores obtained from discriminant analysis of Kifu data are shown.

Human computation games aim to apply human skill toward real-world problems through gameplay. Such games may suffer from poor retention, potentially due to the constraints that using pre-existing problems place on game design. Previous work has proposed using player rating systems and matchmaking to balance the difficulty of human computation games, and explored the use of rating systems to predict the outcomes of player attempts at levels. However, these predictions were win/loss, which required setting a score threshold to determine if a player won or lost. This may be undesirable in human computation games, where what scores are possible may be unknown. In this work, we examined the use of rating systems for predicting scores, rather than win/loss, of player attempts at levels. We found that, except in cases with a narrow range of scores and little prior information on player performance, Glicko-2 performs favorably to alternative methods.

This paper intends to develop a scale to measure a videogame player’s emotional, sensory, and imaginal experiences in digital gaming. We first define the construct of playful-consumption experience in videogame playing and accordingly, develop a scale for measuring playful experiences in videogames. We collected the data of 225 valid respondents which were further analyzed through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and reliability analysis. The results of EFA and reliability analysis reported that the loaded items were emerged into a seven factor solution and all constructs have good reliability. This study is unique in the videogame literature as it uses the theoretical definition of playful-consumption experience to define and measure the player’s experiences in videogame playing as playful-consumption experience of videogame play.

The ancient Chinese board game, Go, with its simple rules yet highly complex strategies, requires players to encircle more territory than their opponent. However, owing to the rise in the capabilities of Go-playing software and a lack of Go instructors in Japan, there is a need for a software that actively assists human players in learning the high-level strategies required to win the game. This study focuses on generating a review for each consecutive player’s move. This paper studies how to generate an expression for each move based on the distribution of the stones on the board. To this task of generating the expression for each move in a game of Go, we apply a classifier learning technique.

This paper proposes an experimental setting that investigates shared gaze integrations (constant gaze and eye contact) in games and their effects on the social presence perceived by different roles (players and spectators) in a remote scenario. In order to get insights, we conducted a study that is made up of 4 different conditions (2 roles and 2 gaze integrations). Results show, depending on the type of the gaze integration and the role, positive effects of gaze towards an increased awareness and engagement among participants. Through the inclusion of shared gaze information, a new nonverbal communication channel for players and spectators is created that presents an interesting design resource for future approaches of digital play. Designers should receive information on how to design gaze-based interfaces that do not distract players during play, and also give spectators the possibility to experience a game via the player’s eyes.

This paper explores possible interpretations for game refinement measure which has been successfully used to quantify the game sophistication of various types of games such as boardgames and sports. It presents a brief sketch of game refinement theory with a focus on its early works with boardgames, expansion into continuous movement games such as sports, and a bridge between sports and boardgames. It then highlights the bridging idea while considering possible interpretations for game refinement measure, and the meaning of game refinement measure is discussed with a focus on the skill and chance aspects in game playing. It enables to have a new perspective of game refinement theory. Moreover, an example of interpretation for game refinement measure from boardgames and continuous movement games such as MOBA game is shown. The interpretation is well fitting to our intuition as game players and spectators.

To determine the suitability of an SDM (software development methodology) for the development of location-based games, it has to be determined to what degree SDMs address aspects that need to be addressed in the process of developing location-based games. These aspects have been identified from information gathered from the literature and were then validated using a survey. Their importance in the development process was also measured using the survey.A framework that uses these aspects to determine the suitability of SDMs for the development of location-based games was then developed. Applying this framework to a number of existing SDMs it was found, among other, that in general SDMs are well suited for the development of location-based games as far as value to the player is concerned but that they are very lacking when it comes to security and privacy.

In most video services, users watch only the scenes they are interested in, and look back on the scenes they have watched in the past. In these situations, users typically use a seek bar for seeking scenes of the video. They often have to operate the seek bar many times to get to the desired playback position. In this paper, we aim to support the seeking of specific scenes from video contents. In our preliminary study, we found that users seek scenes depending on when each character appears in the video. Therefore, we designed a system to support seeking scenes using the information of characters. We evaluated the usefulness of our proposed system by comparing it with an existing system. According to our qualitative evaluation, we confirm that our proposed system could ease scene seeking.

The deception party game “Are You a Werewolf?” requires players to guess other’s roles through discussions that are based on one’s own role and other players’ crucial utterances. This paper proposes a method to mine the empirical preference data used to identify werewolves from game logs. This involves obtaining an empirical preference related to the practice of divination. In this method, if one of the three players revealing oneself as a seer divines a player as a human, while the other two players divine the player as a werewolf, then it can be judged that the divined player’s role is a werewolf.

This paper studies the strategies used in StarCraft II, a real-time strategy game (RTS) wherein two sides fight against each other in a battlefield context. We propose an approach which automatically classifies StarCraft II game-log collections into rush and non-rush strategies using a support vector machine (SVM). To achieve this, three types of features are evaluated: (i) the upper bound of variance in time series for the numbers of workers, (ii) the upper bound of the numbers of workers at a specific time, and (iii) the lower bound of the start time for building the second base. Thus, by evaluating these features, we obtain the optimal parameters combinations.

Most maps are generated based on measures of distance. However, the time required to reach a points of interest can be more important than the distance for a tourist because it directly indicates availability. We propose a novel geographical visualization technique that represents cartography in terms of the time required to travel between the points of interest rather than the distance. Congestion makes areas of the map expand, whereas ideal traffic conditions make the map shrink in comparison to the actual distance scale of a traditional map. The proposed map visualization application enables a more intuitive scheduling for travelers.

In the 3D game, there are many NPCs for various purposes, and the variety of motion of these NPCs increases the immersion feeling of the game. In this paper, we propose a noise - based motion editing technique that can add diversity and naturalness to the motion of NPCs. In the area of computer graphics, noise function has been used as a classical method of applying the naturalness of the animation. We extract these noise functions from existing motion signals and control them to make many similar motions naturally.

While home-use HMD including Oculus Rift has been widely spread in the market today, simulator sickness mainly caused by difference between visual information and body sensation has taken up as a problem. Even though it has been proved that simulator sickness is reduced by reflecting actual physical movement to a VR space, many of approaches ever proposed had various restrictions and mechanisms easy to cause simulator sickness. In the current study, such an approach for moving within a VR space is proposed for home-use HMD that is less likely to cause simulator sickness.

While intangible culture still remains as a custom, it is gradually losing the substance making it difficult for people to understand the value by their sensibility. Sensibility is important for conservation and dissemination of culture as well as cultural industry, and the augmented reality media convey meaning of shrine rituals, style of ritual manners and meaning as well as information about enshrined deities while appealing to people’s sensibility. Media for the purpose consist of five works mixed with attractiveness of materials and system development. Users are supposed to experience the works sequentially by holding a scroll painting. The scroll painting is a centerpiece to be used, for example, as a screen for projecting works guide and images.

Despite the popularity of Augmented and Virtual Reality within gaming, the full potential of such technologies is yet to be fully taken advantage of. Thus, we introduce WAR Bots, a cyber-physical game which intends to investigate the use of both Augmented and Virtual Reality within a coherent gaming experience. We present the underlying architecture to realize our approach, and accordingly, implemented our proposed method in a multiplayer game. Finally, we present the future direction of our approach.

Storyboards are used in the beginning stages of making animation to explain the story or screenplay. This paper proposes a system which assists with storyboard writing and the production process. This system is used with a tablet that allows for input with a pen. It automatically calculates the number of cuts and time required for each scene and can automatically produce a schedule from storyboards. This system makes management for overall animation easy.

In this paper, we propose an anthropomorphic approach to generate speech sentences of a specific object according to surrounding circumstances using the recent Deep Neural Networks technology. In the proposal approach, the user can have pseudo communication with the object by photographing the object with a mobile terminal. We introduce some examples of application of the proposal approach to entertainment products, and show that this is an anthropomorphic approach capable of interacting with the environment.

The Little Doormaid is a fairy tale about mentoring, social innovation and technology. In order to shed light on the research questions of how to develop the fairy tale into a video game and how to evaluate the effect of the game experience for its audience, we run a preliminary literature review. This paper reviews related efforts that will guide the development and evaluation of the Little Doormaid game prototype. We report about an initial set of relevant papers and an initial organization of the literature according to trends, such as interactive fairy tale development, Video game design and play as a space of resistance, creativity and sociability; Crowdfunding for production; The learner/player experience; Designing for diversity by evaluating for diversity.

In this paper, we propose Lifestyle Agent, which manages user’s lifestyle in a chat format. Lifestyle agent counsels users through chat and encourages the formation of motivation with the aim of improving users’ lifestyle habits. In an evaluation experiment, we had users experience chat examples with Lifestyle Agent and gained knowledge on dialogue planning to promote improvement of lifestyle habits.

Along with development of animation works and their market, it has become more difficult for users to find out works corresponding to their own preference from among huge number of animation works as well as to recognize the whole picture of contents related to them. Therefore, “AniReco” is proposed in this paper which is an animation work recommendation system capable of recommending animation works and their related contents in a cross-sectional fashion while reflecting users’ potential preference. As a result of evaluation experiment performed aiming at verifying the system usability and contents of recommendation; it has been proved that the recommendation system is capable of recommending animation works which reflect users’ preference.

Reading aloud is an important study method of acquiring information and building knowledge from text. This article proposes an objective and automatable method that evaluates fluency of children’s reading by reflecting the evaluation by those who are experienced in book reading (to children), and presents the outcomes of building an automatic evaluation system on the fluency of reading with that method.

In this paper, we propose a system “AirMeet” that supports temporary communication within the venue of the social gathering by limiting personal information to be shared at the time of the social gathering according to its purposes. As a result of carrying out the experiment at the social gatherings, we confirmed that we can promote sharing within the boundary of meeting venue by limiting the personal information participants had not disclosed on the Web. In addition, it confirmed that communication is supported by sharing personal information according to the purpose of the social gathering and using the application in the venue, and it showed the usefulness of the application.

It is difficult to choose the right combination of make-up to reflect each individual taste since there are many products for each part of your face such as your cheek and mouth. Here we propose a make-up support system based on your choice of facial color. This system will present a make-up simulation image based on your favorite facial image and a list of make-up products to make that happen from the user’s favorite facial image and the user’s own facial image. From the user’s evaluation, this system will suggest a color simulation image and make-up products that will bring you closer to your choice of facial image color and we have confirmed that this will help you choose the right combination of make-up products that will reflect your taste.

Nowadays, we often plan our travels by using tourism-related information abundantly available on the web. However, it is not simple to find useful information for your travel plans from enormous amount of information. This study, therefore, proposes a system that can make recommendations to you based on your preferences without you having to search information. Extracting the preferences of the users will be done simply by having images of their preferences selected by the users from the touristic images. The performance evaluation test on the system was also conducted.

The diversification of personal tastes and the rapid increase in choices makes it difficult to select things that suits them. For service providers it is fixedly segmented like a conventional mass media It is becoming more difficult to provide advertisements and services to individuals. Because of these circumstances, it is requested that we can accurately acquire personal preferences and analyze them. On the other hand, attention is focused on O2O, which connects online actions to offline online shopping in real stores.We also use gaming which makes various elements of everyday life into a game, Measures have also been taken to immerse and positively tackle purchasing behavior. In the marketing field, it is said that narrative is important for inducing user’s behavior. Therefore, in this research, we construct a partner character system based on scenario game and verify whether we can increase purchasing behavior in a real shop by making users engage in the system using scenarios and characters that can be friends with users.

With the change in our diet, importance was placed on dietary education, and various systems for dietary education have been proposed. However, there has been no system that deals cooking tools. This article, therefore, proposes a peeler-type device, ‘TamaPeeler’, in the hypothesis that touching the food directly and being involved in cooking would raise their interest in food. TamaPeeler detects motions of peeling vegetables, and simultaneously makes various peeling sounds from the wirelessly connected smart phone. As we observed children during its exhibit, we have observed them proactively peeling vegetables, or showing interests in peeling other vegetables, and it was suggested that using an interactive cooking tool can raise the interests of children in food and diet.

In recent years, research on CG technology has advanced. However, the current CG character can only perform deterministic behavior; there is a problem that interaction cannot be real. Therefore, it is necessary to change the facial expression and gaze in real time to the user by the CG character to select a specific user in the space where there are multiple users, and to do real interaction with the user by using the episode control system and user recognition. In this paper, Kinect V2 recognizes the behavior of a specific user from multiple users, generates a complex gesture of CG characters, gaze representation etc., and proposes a system that CG character supports the provision of services. In this paper, we verify behavior recognition when there is one user and verify behavior recognition by priority when there are multiple users. Because there were many misrecognition of the skeleton, there were many times when the behavior was not recognized. In the evaluation experiments, we will realize even CG character’s behavior generation in relation to episode control technology.

This study proposes a watching support system for a beginner watcher of fighting games. The fighting games is a type of e-Sports genre similar to Karate and boxing. Two game characters (e.g., a grappler) fight each other in the game. As with actual fighting sports, positioning on the game field of the game character in this game is important in winning the match. A concept of displaying annotation according to situations based on the characters’ positioning for a beginner watcher of the fighting games is proposed from a previous study. The present paper defines three typical situations and proposes keyword and graphic annotations to encourage understanding of the match and emphasize amusement for the beginner watcher of fighting games. This study also develops a prototype system, and their annotations are superimposed on the match video. As a result, the proposed system can support beginner watchers through subjective experiments.

The animatoronics is used for the expression of the character with many picture works which includes movies. As for the animatronics mask that the person wears of the lively character, the expression of lively character is truly possible because the actor’s performance is reflected directly. In this research, I suggest using an animatronics mask in order to reflect the character’s feelings and expressions real time by the actor wearing the mask. Conventionally, it is necessary for the actor to look good with the movements and facial expressions beforehand in order to determine if the actor can intuitively play the character but thinks that an actor can play a character intuitively by using this system.

Nowadays, more and more fashion stores have started to introduce digital signage displays for dynamically switching advertisement contents of their products. To attract people’s attention and interest towards a display, some signage systems distribute suitable contents for each individual based on personal attributes, acquired through a camera. However, if there are people who are not interested in the digital signage around the display, suitable contents are not necessarily distributed to those who really intend to view it. Therefore, in this paper we propose a digital signage that can take into account people who have higher potential of viewing the display. First, we acquire human behavior and personal attributes of each person. Then, the potential degree of viewing the display is calculated for each person. Next, our system searches content candidates for each person based on their personal attributes. Finally, the distributed contents are determined by selecting more candidates for people with a higher viewing potential.

In this paper, we present the concept, prototype design and implementation of Zapzap, a table-top device that shows the rough contents of a book placed on it. Zapzap is expected to be deployed in bookstores to support customers browsing books. When the user places a book on the display, the system shows keywords, i.e., words often included in the book. When the user taps one of the displayed words, a sentence that includes the selected word is shown. Zapzap aims to present the atmosphere of a book without spoiling its story.

In-store physical shopping experiences are often complemented with searches for product related information on mobile devices. However, there is a distinct gap between the physical reality at the shop and the digital content on mobile devices. At the same time, in the not-too-distant future, we envision a world where mixed-reality technologies become ubiquitous, in much the same way as mobile devices have become today. In this context, we proposed MR-Shoppingu, a novel interactive retail shopping experience by using a combination of continuous context awareness, natural user actions, and augmented physical products with online content. Users can interact with products physically and naturally, and are provided with relevant content and recommendations virtually in mixed-reality. This may help consumers in the purchasing process by increasing efficiency and certainty of purchase, and enabling a more personalized and entertaining shopping experience.

The purpose of this study is to create a streetscape simulation system to support local cultural succession by conveying—in a clear and simple way—local history and culture to interested members of the public. We developed an interactive system, based on a game engine, for the streetscape of Fujisawa-juku, which is a post-station town on the former Tokaido Road of the late Edo period. We designed 3D models for former architecture and urban facilities, using Ukiyo-e and old documents provided by the Fujisawa city archive as references. In addition, regarding dynamic spatial elemental components that encourage users to visually survey the area, we prepared non-player characters that walk in a specified range and communicate a fixed set of remarks. Furthermore, we created soundscapes, which correspond to particular locations, using sound effects in the 3D models by incorporating natural sounds. The developed streetscape simulation system is on permanent exhibition at the Fujisawa-juku Intersection Hall and is widely accessible to the public.

Recently, a research on eating habits of Japanese college students revealed that they have a highly desire to communicate with others through co-eating. Even though better eating experience through co-eating is important, they often tend to be alone even more because of some reasons like small households, living alone, and having no time to find others for co-eating. Therefore, we believe that it may improve eating experience by incorporating a fictional character into the real space as a partner to eat together. For validating the idea, we have developed a virtual co-eating system for solving issues caused from solitary eating, and show some insights from its user study.

Motion and gesture are garnering significant interest as the sizes of screens are getting larger. To provide lightweight finger motion tracking on low-power mobile environments, we propose an approach that breaks down the stereotypes of camera view points. By directing the camera view angle towards the ceiling, the proposed approach can reduce the problem complexity incurred by complicated background environments. Though this change incurs poor lighting conditions for image processing, by clustering and tracking the fragmented motion blobs from the motion image of the saturation channel, rapid finger motion can be tracked efficiently with low computational load. We successfully implemented and tested the proposed approach on a low-power mobile device with a 1.5 GHz mobile processor and a low specification camera with a capture rate of under 15 fps.

Game development project managers and product owners, such as directors, producers, and studio heads, rely on experience-based tacit knowledge to decide how much content to create for players. However, they could be operating on a misunderstanding of the way their players consume game content and how much game content is even desirable to players.This paper presents the initial findings of our efforts to mine video game achievement data to discover trends in game completion rates and correlations to factors outside of the length of the game itself. Through tagging a sample of game achievements that signal a player has “finished” the primary single-player content, we discover that, for most games, few players will consume all of the provided content. With a better understanding of how players consume game content, project managers and product owners can make more informed decisions on project scope, which could reduce game budgets, make schedules easier to meet, and improve overall production efficiency.

We propose a tablet app that aids in rehabilitation for carpal tunnel syndrome. Patients play a game on a tablet PC in which they catch animal characters displayed on the screen with their thumb. In addition, we developed a system that records patient rehabilitation logs from the tablet and sends them to the cloud, where doctors can observe a patient’s condition remotely.

This article suggests a technique to make back of the hand (BOH) a track pad by attaching a distance ranging sensor on the side of a smart watch. It does not only estimate the position of a finger on BoH but also distinguishes the presence or absence of distance between the operating finger and BoH, which functions as an operating surface. Distance data and signal strength data are obtained by distance ranging sensor array, and the presence of distance is distinguished by machine learning. Our performance evaluation shows the accuracy of finger position estimation is 4.2 mm (SD = 1.2 mm).

In this paper, we propose a new interaction technique for controlling applications by touching the forehead that the skin deformation is detected by an enhanced Head-Mounted Display (HMD). This technique envisions supporting commands and controls for applications as map applications and photo viewers without carrying additional controlling device which removes the user’s eye from the display. In this technique, the skin deformation is measured by attaching light sensors to the HMD. The deformation of the skin is caused by the user touching the forehead with the finger. In this paper, we support the recognition of multiple gestures with a Support Vector Machine (SVM).

This paper explores a promising rate of discount as sales promotion, whereas game refinement measurement is employed for the assessment. Computer simulation was performed to collect data for the analysis, and real data from well known companies such as Amazon JP was used. The results indicate that a reasonable discount zone from the customer’s point of view is ranged from 49% to 64% off.

Character recognition collects item keywords from images from e-commerce websites; however, it requires a huge amount of training data. In this paper, we propose an efficient method to collect the training data by generating synthesis images and emphasizing outlines to obtain realistic images. The proposed method improves recognition accuracy on both generated images and real images from e-commerce websites.

Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality technologies are embraced by designers, scholars and charities alike, some primarily for their entertaining properties, others also for the opportunities in education, motivation or persuasion. Applications with the latter objective, that of persuasion, are designed not only to be entertaining, but are also designed (or framed) to shape how players think and feel about issues in reality. However, despite the growing interest in the persuasive opportunities of these immersive technologies, we still lack the design strategies and best-practices that could support in the design of these ‘immersive persuasive games’. To address this still-unexplored and fragmented design space, we organize a design-oriented workshop that brings together academia and industry. The workshop is informed by a Research through Design approach in which the primary focus is to generate knowledge through designing. Participants design and evaluate ideas on-the-spot in an iterative manner using low-fidelity, life-size, prototyping and role-playing techniques, thereby mimicking an embodied interactive immersive environment. By reflecting on design practices and player experiences, we construct a body of knowledge, built exemplar work and distil best-practices to formulate design strategies for the design of immersive persuasive games.

Online e-commerce has been growing continuously. According to eMarketers latest forecasts, worldwide retail e-commerce sales will reach $4 trillion USD by 2020. In addition, using cutting-edge technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), sensing technology, image processing, robotics and online payment technology, new shopping experiences that enhance offline or online shopping, or integrate the two types of shopping experiences are being introduced. In this workshop, new concepts and recent progress in shopping experiences are discussed from various perspectives. The workshop will include invited talk sessions by world-leading innovators, and interactive poster and demonstration presentations of submitted papers and abstracts.