Interactive Technologies and Sociotechnical Systems

In this paper we present a novel parameter learning and identification method of virtual garment. We innovate in the ordinary parameter identification process and introduce the fabric data (Kawabata Evaluation System data) to combine the expert’s knowledge with fuzzy system. With our method the parameters of virtual garment can be calculated automatically which are assigned by the animator’s experience and hard to tune in the past years. The statistic analysis and machine learning method are used to build the fuzzy system to present the fabric expert’s knowledge. With interactively inputting the human subjective variables to our method, the animator who knows little knowledge in physical attributes of fabric material can also create and tune the virtual garment application. The experimental results indicate that this method can be used in practical virtual environments and has the expansibility to other applications.

As shown in Paul Milgram et al’s Reality-Virtuality Continuum (1994), Augmented Reality occupies a very unique status in the spectrum of Mixed Reality. Unlike Virtual Reality, which is completely made up of the virtual and has been the most important theme for both research and practical applications, theoretical approach for Augmented Reality seems to be not keeping up with the technical development. In this paper, two qualities of Augmented Reality, which are virtuality of Augmented Reality and reality of Augmented Reality, are restated with reference to film and animation studies. In spite of the common and essential factor, computer generated images or virtual images, studies in computer vision appear to be set apart from other fields of studies. The object of this paper is to make an experimental conjunction for Augmented Reality and the concepts of Perceptual Reality, Second-order Reality, and possible world theory. It is expected to be useful particularly for studying artistic potentials and applications of Augmented Reality.

This paper presents a multimodal reference resolution approach in virtual environment, which is called RRVE. Based on the relationship between cognitive status and reference, RRVE divides the objects into four status hierarchies including pointing, in focus, activated, extinct, and step by step it processes multimodal reference resolution according to current status hierarchy. Also it defines a match function to compute the match probability of referring expression and potential referent, and describes the semantic signification and temporal constraints. Finally, sense shape is used to deal with the pointing ambiguity, which helps the user to interact precisely in immersive virtual environment.

This paper describes an ongoing research, SpaceCustomiser : InterActive, [SC : IA] which deals with development of digital design strategies based on non-Euclidean geometries, whereas the body in movement generates interactively architectural SPACE. The input – movement – is being electronically processed in such a way that the output represents a continuous, real-time modification of the space. For this purpose an on-site-built InterFace employing sensor/actuator technology enables translation of the recorded movement into spatial configurations. The InterAction between the body and the architectural space gives insight into, how the human body shapes space.

Designing and building Virtual Environments (VEs) has never been an easy task and it is therefore often performed by experts in the field. This problem arises even more when it comes to the design of behavior. To address this issue, an model-based approach called VR-WISE has been developed. This approach aims at making the design of VEs more accessible to users without or with little background in VE development. This means that the VE is specified by means of high-level models from which the actual VE can be generated. The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, the design environment, supporting the approach, is described. We show how the models can be created in a graphical way. We also discuss the ”Verbalizer”. This module provides a natural language interface for the models, which enhances the intuitiveness of the specification. Secondly, we explain how behavior models can be specified.

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to modeling and dynamic creation of behavior-rich interactive 3D contents. The approach, called Beh-VR, enables dynamic generation of virtual scenes from arbitrarily selected sets of specifically designed reusable virtual objects, called VR-Beans. Behavior of the objects is determined by associated scripts encoded in a high-level language called VR-BML. The method significantly simplifies creation of interactive 3D scenes and can be applied to various application domains. Examples discussed in the paper are related to creation of educational and entertainment contents in the cultural heritage domain.

This paper describes the concept and the current state of development of "reactive spaces". How can one communicate with architectural spaces, through one’s movement or even one’s appearance? One goal of the project

N ‘Files – A Space To React

is it to develop a system which supports the interaction between spatial areas and its users. A space, which is changing with and through the user....which reacts to the user’s input. The basis for such experiments was laid in research fields such as Ambient Intelligence (AmI), Ubiquitous Computing or Hybrid Environments. If take these new communication and interaction possibilities some steps further, then it becomes clear that our traditional sense of space will be transformed radically by them.

This paper addresses issues of distributing multimedia presentations in an ambient intelligent environment, exams the existing technologies and proposes IPML, a markup language that extends SMIL for distributed settings. It uses a powerful metaphor of play, with which the timing and mapping issues in distributed presentations are easily covered in a natural way.

This paper presents the usability evaluation of our developed multi-sensory Virtual Assembly Environment (VAE). The evaluation is conducted by using its three attributes: 1) efficiency of use; 2) user’s satisfaction; and 3) reliability in use. These are addressed by using task completion times (TCTs), questionnaires, and human performance error rates (HPERs), respectively. A peg-in-a-hole and a Sener electronic box assembly tasks have been used as the task cases to perform the experiments, using sixteen participants. The experimental outcomes are analysed and discussed.

Soft shadow computation plays an important role in generating photo-realistic images. A new method of real-time all-frequency shadow rendering in 3D scenes under dynamic illumination is introduced in this paper. The non-linear wavelet approximation on the pre-computed radiance transfer matrix is used, which can help us to select the main directions sensitive to illumination of each sampling point. This approach efficiently avoids non-linear selection of the light vector in real-time rendering, and the approximation is used only once in the pre-computed phrase. We encode the resulting radiance transfer matrix into a sparse form, and store it as textures in 2D texture buffers. Meanwhile, the light vector is organized into a cube map on GPU to accelerate computation in the run-time process. This approach has been applied to render a variety of 3D scenes with soft shadows, and proved to be able to increase the relighting speed with no image quality reduction.

We present an efficient occlusion culling algorithm for interactive rendering of large complex virtual scene with high depth complexity. Our method exploits both spatial and temporal coherence of visibility. A space hierarchy of scene is constructed and its nodes are rendered in an approximate front-to-back order. Nodes in view frustum are inserted into one of layered node lists, called layered buffers(

LBs

), according to its distance to the view point. Each buffer in the LBs is rendered with hardware occlusion queries. Using a visibility predictor(

VP

) for each node and interleaving occlusion queries with rendering, we reduce the occlusion queries count and graphics pipeline stalls greatly. This occlusion culling algorithm can work in a conservative way for high image quality rendering or in an approximate way for time critical rendering. Experimental results of different types of virtual scene are provided to demonstrate its efficiency and generality.

A Free Form Projection Display using a distortion-eliminating algorithm was constructed. In the system, an object in the curved surface is used and the virtual object is represented by image projection. The virtual object is shown as if it fixed in the curved screen surface and gives the user a sense of motion parallax. Using this construction, the virtual object can be handled directly by the user’s hand and examined.

This system seems to be effective in manual operation and shape recognition of virtual object.

In order to evaluate the effectivity, we performed the experiments to compare FFPD and conventional flat display monitor with mouse from the viewpoint of depth perception and manual operation.

Content adaptation techniques for progressive delivery of 3D models to clients with different rendering capabilities and network connections has been extensively studied in recent years. In this paper, a client-server based novel service-oriented architecture for 3D content delivery and adaptive rendering is presented. The architecture is integrated into the service-oriented architecture (SOA) framework, and it is designed to enhance the client user experience by progressively delivering 3D content stream quickly, reliably, and with high quality based on the adaptive requirements. At the client end the stream is progressively decoded up to the “best” level-of-details as defined by the client computational resources and the user inclination.

An adaptive watermarking algorithm operating in the ridgelet domain is proposed. Since the most significant coefficients of the ridgelet transform (RT) can represent the most energetic direction of an image with straight edge, the image is first partitioned into small blocks and RT is applied for each block. Followed by the multiplicative rule, the watermark sequence is casting into local linear singularity coefficients within the highest energy direction of each block. Through analyzing the distribution of the texture in ridgelet coefficients of each block, the feature of luminance masking and texture masking is incorporated to adjust the watermark’s embedding strength. Then the embedded watermark can be blindly detected by correlation detector. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm can achieve a better tradeoff between the robustness and transparency.

This paper extends the upright face detection framework proposed by Viola et al. 2001 to handle in-plane rotated faces. These haar-like features work inefficiently on rotated faces, so this paper proposes a new set of ±26.565 ° haar-like features which can be calculated quickly to represent the features of rotated faces. Unlike previous face detection techniques in training quantities of samples to build different rotated detectors, with these new features, we address to build different rotated detectors by rotating an upright face detector directly so as to achieve in-plane rotated face detection. This approach is selected because of its computational efficiency, simplicity and training time saving. This proposed method is tested on CMU-MIT rotated test data and yields good results in accuracy and maintains speed advantage.

Contour grouping is an important issue in computer vision. However, traditional ways tackling the problem usually fail to provide as satisfying results as human vision can do. One important feature of human vision mechanism is that human vision tends to group together edges that are not only geometrically and topologically related, but also similar in their appearances – the appearances of image patches around them including their brightness, color, texture cues, etc. But in traditional grouping approaches, after edges or lines have been detected, the appearances of image patches around them are seldom considered again, leading to the results that edges belonging to boundaries of different objects are sometimes falsely grouped together. In this paper, we introduce an

appearance feature

to describe the appearance of an image patch around a line segment, and incorporate this appearance feature into a

saliency measure

to evaluate contours on an image. The most salient contour is found by optimizing this saliency measure using a genetic algorithm. Experimental results prove the effectiveness of our approach.

Presented here is a discussion of the techniques required to create stereoscopic panoramic images. Such images allow interactive exploration of 3D environments with stereoscopic depth cues. If projected in a surround display environment they can engage the two characteristics of the human visual system responsible for immersion, namely stereopsis and peripheral vision.

It is difficult to deal with large datasets by kernel based methods since the number of basis functions required for an optimal solution equals the number of samples. We present an approach to build a sparse kernel classifier by adding constraints to the number of support vectors and to the classifier function. The classifier is considered on Riemannian manifold. And the sparse greedy learning algorithm is used to solve the formulated problem. Experimental results over several classification benchmarks show that the proposed approach can reduce the training and runtime complexities of kernel classifier applied to large datasets without scarifying high classification accuracy.

Chaotic optimization is a new optimization technique. For image segmentation, conventional chaotic sequence is not very effective to three-dimension gray histogram. In order to solve this problem, a three-dimension chaotic sequence generating method is presented. Simulation results show that the generated sequence is pseudorandom and its distribution is approximately inside a sphere whose centre is (0.5 , 0.5 , 0.5). Based on this work, we use the proposed chaotic sequence to optimize three-dimension maximum between-variance image segmentation method. Experiments results show that our method has better segmentation effect and lower computation time than that of the original three-dimension maximum between-variance image segmentation method for mixed noise disturbed image.

In this paper, a registration method based on Harris corners is proposed. It is composed of three steps. First, corner extraction and matching. We use the gray level information around the corner to setup the correspondences, then use the affine invariant of Mahalannobis distance to remove the mis-matched corner points. From this correspondence of the corner points, the affine matrix between two different images can be determined. Finally, map all points in the sensed image to the reference using the estimated transformation matrix and assign the corresponding gray level by re-sampling the image in the sensed image. Experiments with different types of multi-sensor images demonstrated the feasibility of our method.

In this paper, we present a system for completing the blank hole in an image list or a video sequence, which can be used in movie-making industry to produce some special montage effect. To achieve this, we apply a 3D coordinate to depict the video clip. As the time information representing different frames is considered, the available information is enriched than the single image. Our method takes the global character into account for avoiding visual inconsistencies. We view the video completion problem as a labeling problem and apply the belief propagation algorithm to minimize the energy defined on the label graph. By measuring the similarity between source and target patches, we could discover the appropriate patch to fill the hole. Furthermore, we introduce some techniques to speedup the belief propagation algorithm for gaining better performance efficiency. Examples demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach and the results are encouraging.

With the increasing popularity of digital cameras, image editing tools for amateur users are needed. Patrick Pérez and his colleagues generalized that image editing tasks concern either global changes or local changes confined to a selection[1]. Here we focus on local editing of images’ color—object-based image recoloring.

In this paper, we introduce a framework for recoloring destination region (desired object) with desired color, which integrates alpha matting and compositing and color transformation algorithms to provide an object-based recoloring tool for common users. There are three steps in the framework: matte extraction, color transformation and alpha compositing. We present a fast color histogram specification as a general method for example-based color transformation. In some cases, our framework to the recoloring problem are quite simple but works well. We thus feel that the primary contribution of this paper may lie in the organic integration of algorithms totally.

Recent advances in single view reconstruction (SVR) have been in modeling 3D curved surfaces and automation. We extend the SVR along the first direction in several ways: (i) We study the reconstruction of curved surfaces under perspective projection rather than orthographic projection. (ii) We illustrate that the horizontally flipped image of the reflective symmetric objects is equivalent to an image photographed from another position under the simplified perspective projection. So the traditional structure from motion techniques can be used to recover the 3D feature points on them. They can be used to create the planar model of the object and be used as position constraints to generate curved surfaces. (iii) New linear constraints, such as perspective projection, are exploited to the linearly constrained quadratic optimization to finding the smoothest surface. We demonstrate these advances in reconstructing real symmetric curved surfaces and objects.

This paper researches the method of constructing 3D surface from planar contours. We base our work on distance field function method and mainly concentrate on how to simply and uniformly solve the problems of isosurface generation caused by non-manifold surface. Our work includes three main steps: grid adjustment analysis, volume construction and surface construction. In the first step, we present a new method to process non-manifold contour by adaptively adjusting grid size. In the volume construction and the surface construction steps, we use classic distance field function and Marching Cube method respectively. The experiment shows that our algorithm has more realistic results in constructing 3D surface from planar contour.

In this paper we present a new method for the model of interpolation surfaces by the blending of polar coordinates and Cartesian coordinate. A trajectory curve is constructed by circular trigonometric Hermite interpolation spline (CTHIS) and a profile curve is presented by

C

2

-continuous B-spline like interpolation spline (BSLIS). A piecewise interpolation spline surface is incorporated by the blending of CTHIS and BSLIS. In addition, scaling functions have been introduced to improve the flexibility of the model of the interpolation surfaces. On the basis of these results, some examples are given to show how the method is used to model some interesting surfaces.

Two contributions on 3D implicit surface reconstruction from scattered points are presented in this paper. Firstly, least square radial basis functions (LS RBF) are deduced from the conventional RBF formulations, which makes it possible to use fewer centers when reconstruction. Then we use orthogonal least square (OLS) method to select significant centers from large and dense point data sets. From the selected centers, an implicit continuous function is constructed efficiently. This scheme can overcome the problem of numerical ill-conditioning of coefficient matrix and over-fitting. Experimental results show that our two methods are efficient and highly satisfactory in perception and quantification.

This paper proposes a new interpolatory subdivision scheme for triangular meshes that produces

C

1

continuous limit surfaces for both regular and irregular settings. The limit surfaces also have bounded curvature, which leads to improved quality surfaces. The eigen-structure analysis demonstrates the smoothness of the limit surfaces. According to the new scheme, the approach for progressive transmission of meshes is presented. Finally, results of refined models with the new scheme are shown. In most cases, the new scheme generates more pleasure surfaces than the traditional modified butterfly scheme, especially near the irregular settings.

Based on the objective function defined by the approximation of the curvature variation formula of the curve, a new method for constructing composite optimized geometric Hermite (COH) curves is presented in this paper. The new method can deal with some cases in which neither of the existing methods those are based on minimum curvature variation or minimum strain energy can get pleasing shape. The comparison of the new method with the existing methods are given, which shows that none of the new method and the existing ones can deal with all the cases well. The experiments show that combination of the new method with the existing methods can achieve a good result in all cases.

PCA is a useful tool for pose normalization in 3D model retrieval, in this paper, we analyze its basic principle, point out its shortcoming and give our solution. Experiments show that our methods can enhance the robustness of PCA and align 3D models well.

This paper presents a system for crowd evacuation in emergency situation based on dynamics model to offer a base platform for further researches. Starting with the implementation of base functions, our focus is on the stability and expandable of the platform to offer new functions easily according to our needs latter. To improve the independence of the module, the function into layers and dividing the data are separated into blocks. To reach efficient system implementation, the 3D building is translated into a 2D graphics by turning the map into a group of nodes. Furthermore, the element called node plug is used to enhance the expansibility of the system. Experiments are carried out to analyze the crowd’s evacuation efficiency in a given building. The impact caused by mass behavior, the structure of the building and the number of people inside are also construed qualitatively in the experiments.

Come Closer describes a combined research and art installation using wearable technology and collaborative interaction to explore and challenge the sense of personal space and proximity to others. Participants become acutely aware of each other; aware of their presence in both physical and virtual space. They are encouraged to probe and investigate the boundaries that define personal space, to test them and to cross them. Interaction is defined entirely by position in a room, and the distances between them and others. The movements of the participants are logged and analysed for expected and unexpected behaviours.

In the factory automation, the communication information between the Control part and the GUI part usually contains the product, control and the operational information. The operations in the GUI part transfer the information between the user and the operational system part. Detailed analysis of the communication information and the process is an important factor to the system. And current software development process is changed over component and internet environments. In this paper, I was design and implement the control system for factory automation in component and internet environments. The component logic makes up the remote status view of the GUI communication modules which has associating the message interrupt method and the timer. This research aimed the IC test handler and this system can display on the web for review and analysis. The proposed method improves the analyzability by catching the operational data under various operation statuses. And it is able to come under a system manager’s observation.

This paper will discuss new cultural heritage-based communication and education models that are inspired by the ideas and arts of ancient Asia. Some examples of the models used will be given to show how knowledge from around the world can be shared. The goal of this research is to provide new data-based Communication Models that can be used to achieve education with a global background. Our research has just begun, and we are currently working at the theoretical level. The models we discuss here will be examined in greater detail during the next stage of our work.

The ARQ_RE model is proposed for supporting QoS resource errors detection-recovery in the situation-aware middleware. An example of situation-aware applications is a multimedia education system. QoS guarantees must be met in the application, system and network to get the acceptance of the users of multimedia communication system. There are several constraints which must be satisfied to provide guarantees during multimedia transmission. They are time, space, device, frequency, and reliability constraints. We propose a method for increasing reliability through an Adaptive Reliable QoS for Resource Errors (ARQ_RE) model for ubiquitous computing environments. The model aims at guaranteeing it through application QoS.

E-learning models are attempts to develop frameworks to address the concerns of the learner and the challenges presented by the technology so that online learning can take place effectively. So it usually used the item difficulty of item analysis method. But item guessing factor in learning results has to be considered to apply the relative item difficulty more precisely. So, for e-Learning system support to learner considering learning grade, it need item revision difficulty which considered item guessing factor. In this paper, I designed and embodied the learner’s tailoring e-learning system on the item revision difficulty. For an efficient design, I use PetriNet and UML modeling. In building this system, I am able to support a variety of learning step choice to learners so that the learner can work in a flexible learning environment.

The paper proposes a time-controlling algorithm for large-scale terrain rendering, which can’t be efficiently dealt with by LOD technique. In this algorithm, the terrain is divided and organized by quad-tree structure. Each terrain patch is assigned a certain time according to the total rendering time given in advance. The multi-resolution levels rendered are determined by visual apperception. To solve the T-junction and popping, an approach of stitching the level boundaries and geomorphing are respectively performed on GPU. The algorithm guarantees that each frame is rendered in preset time independent of the terrain or the eye position. The slow or jerky phenomena during roaming, which are usually caused by unstable rendering frame rate, can be successfully avoided. This terrain rendering algorithm is demonstrated in a massive terrain flyover application. The experiment proves that this algorithm is feasible and efficient.

As a new management tool in place of the barcode, RFID (radio frequency identification) applied in various industrial fields. The distinguishing feature of RFID is it’s ability for contactless information transmission, making it possible to retrieve information about previous activities from people without their knowing.

In this research, Geographical Content Display System Development and it’s tested and experimental use was conducted as one example of the use of RFID technology in the field of education. By using RFID technology in a hands-on workshop, we investigated how the data obtained could be analyzed and we show future possibilities.

We propose a rotational symmetry evaluation method that is used to determine the manufacturing technique of rotationally symmetric pottery like vessels. With the help of scanned 3D data of the surface of the vessel the symmetry is determined which is used to derive the manufacturing technique for this particular vessel. For example it can be determined whether or not a turning wheel was used to manufacture the vessel. Results for trditionally manufactured new vessels and ancient vessels are given and the applicability of the method in archaeology is shown.

Japan’s oldest Noh stage has been restored using CG. The painting of pine trees on a wall, which is severely damaged by the weather, has been restored and painted based on several historical and aesthetical investigations. The painting was texture-mapped onto the CG model giving the atmosphere of the stage when it was originally built. By using the CG Noh stage and motion capture data of a Noh play performed by a professional player, several kinds of edutaiment contents have been produced. Not only an ordinary character animation of a Noh play on the restored stage, but also walk-through animation of a scene which might be observed by the player during a play was created, which might be useful for introductory enlightenment.

In this paper, we propose an original three-dimensional (3D) computer-aided approach for surveying and mapping caves to get line drawings. By introducing 3D digital technologies into the line drawing, our approach has advantages in improving the drawing accuracy while cutting a lot of time costs. The 3D digital technologies are used to reconstruct accurate 3D models of real scenes. Then, the lines on the model surfaces are extracted by analyzing the model geometry. To demonstrate the advantages, we compare our approach with the traditional method usually used by archaeologists. Results show that our approach is much more convenient and accurate than the previous method.

Chinese opera, a heritage performance art with many different styles and of great popularity in the mid 20th century is undergoing a major decline in recent times. There are ongoing efforts initiated by the Chinese government to document this heritage of humanity based on photographs and audio records of renowned master artists. All these efforts are based on the use of technologies for still and video imaging, with their own serious difficulties, as enunciated by the project leaders. With rapid and tremendous advances in 3D graphics, use of 3D virtual humans is an exciting new medium of documentation. In this paper we discuss our efforts towards this approach. Our documentation proposal makes use of 3D body scanning technology for capture of facial expressions for combining it with the well established motion capture technology for capturing body movements from young artists, along with audio from master artists. Our initial efforts have been devoted to facial expression capture and synthesis using 3D scan data. The paper brings out major issues, problems and some of our proposed solutions in using this approach for documentation.

Motivated by the requirements of the present archaeology, we are developing an automated system for archaeological classification and reconstruction of ceramics. This paper shows different acquisition techniques in order to get 3D data of pottery and to compute the profile sections of fragments. With the enhancements shown in this paper, archaeologists get a tool to do archaeological documentation of pottery in a computer assisted way.

The presentation at VSMM’06 will consider concepts related to the participatory culture that is developing throughout the Internet. It will also look at some of the ways in which CHIN has been taking up participatory applications to further the goals of its 1200 member institutions and respond to public expectations. With online projects such as the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC), Community Memories, Agora and the Knowledge Exchange come new challenges that question established business models, learning patterns, the public sphere and collective memory.

Auguste Rodin is the most celebrated sculptor of the 19th century. His works, such as The Gates of Hell, The Thinker, and The Burghers of Calais, are famous worldwide. To our knowledge, no art historians have analyzed three-dimensional data of Rodin’s work. This paper describes our project to fill this need by digitally archiving the bronze statue, The Burghers of Calais. First, we scanned the geometrical shape of the sculpture by using a laser range sensor. After that, we analyzed the resulting three-dimensional data using expert knowledge in the field of art history and technology developed in the fields of computer vision and graphics.

In recent years, 3D and virtual reality have emerged as areas of extreme interest as methods for visualizing digital museum artefacts in context, and particularly over the Internet. The technology associated with these new visualization techniques has until now been very expensive. The advent of cheap computing and graphics cards coupled with increasing Internet ‘broadband’ access has made possible the implementation of effective virtual museums both online and within the museum. Virtual museums are valuable for the end-user for efficient and remote learning about their local heritage in a diverse multimodal manner. Multimodal access to museum artefacts can help the user to better understand and appreciate the objects and stories that the museum brings forward, but also creates a closer psychological bond between the user and his past. If we now couple cheap computing technologies, 3D and virtual reality with appropriate 3D interaction techniques based on formal usability evaluations, museums are able to implement high fidelity exhibitions that are intuitive for the museum visitor. This paper reports on the latest technological additions to the EPOCH Multimodal Interface, which is used as an interaction interface that can be implemented as part of a virtual museum interactive system.

Due to preservation and conservation issues, manuscripts are normally kept in research libraries far from public gaze. On rare occasions, visitors can see these priceless objects, typically separated from them by a sealed case, with only a fixed double page spread visible from a manuscript that may contain hundreds of folios. This restricts the amount of knowledge offered by these books. This paper proposes the creation of virtual manuscripts as exhibits in their own right in a museum context, and as part of a web-based virtual learning environment offering visitors the unique opportunity of engaging with the manuscripts, providing further possibilities for accessing the heritage and cultural information contained in them. A database supplying information about and from the manuscripts, held in a virtual environment, creates the illusion of their “real” presence and materiality. ‘Living Manuscripts’ aims to stimulate and encourage engagement with vulnerable materials via an innovative virtual experience.

This study presents a novel system which supports nurses in note-taking by providing a digital pen and character-recognition system laying stress on user interface. The system applies characteristics of a digital pen for improving the efficiency of tasks related to nursing records. The system aims at improving the efficiency of nursing activities and reducing the time spent for tasks for nursing records. In our system, first, notes are written on a check sheet using a digital pen along with a voice that is recorded on a voice recorder; the pen and voice data are transferred to a PC. The pen data are then recognized automatically as characters, which can be viewed and manipulated with the application. We conducted an evaluation experiment to improve efficiency and operation of the system, and its interface. The evaluation and test operations used 10 test subjects. Based on the test operation and the evaluation experiment of the system, it is turned out that improvement for urgent situations, enhancement of portability, and further use of character recognition are required.

This paper reports on the development of a mobile robot system for operation within a house equipped with a ubiquitous sensor network. Human robot interaction is achieved through the combination of on-robot laser range sensing and ultrasonic sensors mounted in the ceiling of the ubiquitous environment. Places, objects or inhabitants within the environment are tagged with ultrasonic transmitters from which approximate location can be estimated. Fusing these position estimates with on-robot sensor information, the robot can navigate to the transmitter location, approach the target and await further interaction.

A constitution method of a distributed virtual environment using haptic devices is shown. In recent years, the force-feedback devices have been developed and they have gotten a lot of attentions to realize a new interaction modality between human begins and computer systems. The haptic channels, however, are more sensitive to the network QoS (quality of service) such as delays and packet losses than the visual and acoustic channels. Therefore, we propose a new constitution method for realizing an effective virtual environment even in the low-quality network. The proposed method adopts a hybrid approach using the client-server and peer-to-peer models. In this paper, we describe our proposed method, an implemented system, and the results of a preliminary experiment to evaluate the scalability of the proposed architecture.

Humans cognize images of events by perceiving through senses the stimuli generated by events. VR started the idea to let an artifact event generate the stimulation equal to that generated by the original event. For further generalization, we investigated the possibility of letting a human cognize an equivalent image from non-equal stimulation. In the experiment, variable integral stimuli of force, visual, and auditory senses are presented to a subject and integral cognition is compared in the measure of integral intensity. This will hopefully lead to a broader region of cognition possible using limited equipment for presenting stimulation.

This paper describes a novel Human-Robot Interface (HRI) that uses a Mixed Reality (MR) space to enhance and visualize object detection for mobile robot navigation. The MR space combines the 3D virtual model of a mobile robot and its navigating environment with the real data such as physical building measurement, the real-time acquired robot’s position and laser scanned points. The huge amount of laser scanned points are rapidly segmented as belonging either to the background (i.e. fixed building) or newly appeared objects by comparing them with the 3D virtual model. This segmentation result can not only accelerate the object detection process but also facilitate the further process of object recognition with significant reduction of redundant sensor data. Such a MR space can also help human operators realizing effective surveillance through real-time visualization of the object detection results. It can be applied in a variety of mobile robot applications in a known environment. Experimental results verify the validity and feasibility of the proposed approach.

We describe in this paper the implementation and experimentation of a humanoid robot system, aimed at the prevention of children accidents in everyday indoor activities. The main focus of this research work is placed on the “on demand” interaction between the robot and the child in the relevant context that the robot is used (preventing child accidents). Different controlling strategies and attractive interfaces were considered in designing this system, to result in an effective use of the robot when attempting to prevent child accidents. This is achieved through an active attraction of child attention as well as passive interaction. Some experimental results are given and conclusions are drawn, and some future implications are considered in refining not only the independent robot control, but also the effectiveness of this system.

The ability to analyze a human’s facial expressions and reproduce them is important for fun communication. In this paper, a novel model is presented for generating the facial sketch of pen-and-ink style and reproducing facial expressions in facial sketch animation. Facial sketch rendering is implemented by combing the painting path and line template, in which personalized painting path ensures the generated facial sketch to fit the specific face, and line templates bring different styles to it. The animation of facial sketch, which is based on pseudo-muscle model, reproduces some specific expressions in 2D facial sketch. These works are significative for multimedia application in low bandwidth communication environment.

Motion choreography is a design process of creating, structuring and forming body movements. We proposed and implemented a notation-based motion choreography system, LabanChoreographer version 0.1. Given the user specified movement notations, it will firstly perform Laban-based motion retrieval to find the most similar motions from a motion capture database notated with Labanotation, and snap together these retrieved motion clips into a continuous rough motion sequence that match the input Laban sequence as much as possible. Secondly, Laban-based motion editing algorithm is employed to semi-automatically revise and refine this candidate motion sequence such that the resulting motion data can best approximate the desired motion in the user’s mind. The choreographer is able to move flexibly back and forth between Labanotations and its rapid-prototyped motion data. It well supports the iterative and interactive development of movement ideas at a conceptual level.

Experiments in composition and effects of holographic panoramagrams (computer generated holography), demonstrate an analogy between this three-dimensional imaging process and Oriental horizontal scroll painting. These two ways of representing space share a similar conception of spatial representation in which multiple points of view are spread horizontally, parallel to the scene. The similarities are not only geometrical and conceptual, they also reveal a direction in the development of new spatial representation technologies in which the observer isn’t only a passive receiver of visual information from a fixed position, but an active observer. This paper is based on analysis of the holograms structure as well as on artistic experiments in composition and art history researches.

The project Urban-planning game represents a way of democratic involvement of the public in the shaping of the future of historic towns by way of an interactive game. It is based on cooperative behavior between the inhabitants, the experts and the government. The object of the game is acquiring ideas and guidelines for a lasting development on the basis of people’s needs and problems. As a possible way of communication I propose a publicly accessible cooperative nonzero-sum game on the playground of Geographic information system technology. The player has a free use of symbolic infrastructural elements. He can arrange them in the urban space according to his experience, needs and wishes and in agreement with his co-players. The end of the game is supposed to represent work and life in a modern town, organized according to the player’s plans.

E-Sport is a newly emerging research field, especially in China, which has attracted many people’s attention. In this paper, an innovative distributed online game platform is designed for fitness-oriented E-Sports, supporting multi-players or athletes. To provide users with more sense of immersion, technologies of virtual reality and sport simulation have been integrated into such system. Taking prototype system of Virtual Network Marathon as an example, detail designs are focused on the five aspects: story design, network communication, human computer interface, hardware interface and 3D render engine. All these design philosophies gain advantages of scale expandable, functions extendable, an efficient communication protocol and real-time rendering. Users at a distance can deeply immerse into virtual environment and enjoy exercise, competition and entertainment. Implementation of system is also described to validate the feasibility of our method.

Digital Songlines is an Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) project that is developing protocols, methodologies and toolkits to facilitate the collection, education and sharing of indigenous cultural heritage knowledge. The project explores the areas of effective recording, content management and virtual reality delivery capabilities that are culturally sensitive and involve the indigenous custodians, leaders and communities in remote areas of the Australian ‘outback’. It investigates how players in a serious gaming sense can experience Indigenous virtual heritage in a high fidelity fashion with culturally appropriate interface tools. This paper describes a 3D ambient audio quilt designed and implemented specifically for the Digital Songlines software, which is built using the Torque Game Engine. The audio quilt developed provides dynamic ambient fauna and flora sound effects to represent the varying audio environment of the landscape. This provides an authentic contextualised interesting aural experience that can be different each time a location is entered. This paper reports on completed and ongoing research in this area.

In this paper, we introduce UTBot, a virtual agent platform for teaching agent systems’ design. UTBot implements a client for the Unreal Tournament game server and Gamebots system. It provides students with the basic functionality required to start developing their own intelligent virtual agents to play autonomously UT games. UTBot includes a generic agent architecture, CAA (Context-sensitive Agent Architecture), a domain-specific world model, a visualization tool, several basic strategies (represented by internal modes and internal behaviors), and skills (represented by external behaviors). The CAA architecture can support complex long-term behaviors as well as reactive short-term behaviors. It also realizes high context-sensitivity of behaviors. We also discuss our experience using UTBot as a pedagogical tool for teaching agent systems’ design in undergraduate Artificial Intelligence course.