Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

In the field of the architectural heritage, the representation of artefacts, particularly for communication purposes, has benefited from the development of computer-based modelling techniques in fields ranging form archaeology to geography. But numerous experts in the above mentioned heritage field have come to question the readability of realistic models inside which the hypothetical nature of the content, a reconstruction, is not clearly assessed. In parallel, research in information visualisation has demonstrated that graphics can support reasoning as well as communication. Our contribution introduces the genesis of an informative modelling methodology in which the representation of architectural objects is used for information search and visualisation. 3D or 2D models localise objects in time, in space, and in a hierarchy of canonical shapes; they are calculated on the fly and deliver information visually. This paper discusses the underlying modelling methodology and applications in investigations about the evolutions of the city of Kraków (Poland).

Computer-assisted animation production tools have an important role in animation production industries. They could reduce the production cost and time. In this paper, a new computer-assisted artistic pattern drawing system is proposed. The system automatically adds artistic patterns to 2D animations. The artistic patters are captured from key frames drawn by an animator and are applied to line drawings. The result shows that the presented approach can copy artistic patterns from key frames and reduce time and cost for producing artistic animations.

Developments in basic neurological research and techniques used to train professional athletes suggest that one way of facilitating this learning process of motor schemas is through the use of motor imagery, a training technique in which the procedure required to perform a task is mentally rehearsed in absence of actual physical movement. Clinical studies have shown that rehabilitation of hemiplegic and hemiparetic patients can be improved by integrating physical and mental practice. In this paper, we describe an advanced virtual reality workbench, the VR- Mirror, that it has been designed to support stroke patients with upper-limb hemiplegia in generating motor images. The development of this prototype has been supported by the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) – IST programme (Project I-Learning, IST 2001-38861).

Bayesian nets (BNs) appeared in the 1980s as a solution to computational and representational problems encountered in knowledge representation of uncertain information. Shortly afterwards, BNs became an important part of the AI mainstream. During the 1990s, a lively discussion emerged regarding the causal semantics of Bayesian nets, challenging almost a century of statistical orthodoxy regarding inference of causal relations from observational data, and many refer to BNs now as causal graphs. However, the discussion of causal graphs as a data visualization tool has been limited. We argue here that causal graphs together with their causal semantics for see ing and set ting, have the potential to be as powerful and generic a data visualization tool as line graphs or pie charts.

Xface, the new version of our open source, platform independent toolkit for developing 3D embodied conversational agents is presented. The toolkit currently incorporates four pieces of software. The core Xface library is for developers who want to embed 3D facial animation to their applications. XfaceEd editor provides an easy to use interface to generate MPEG-4 ready meshes from static 3D models. XfacePlayer is a sample application that demonstrates the toolkit in action and XfaceClient is used as the communication controller over network.

Interactive 3D statistics visualizations have certain limitations. Through experiments with a 3D model, I have created a number of interaction techniques – the Reference Grid, Callouts and Interactive Blending – to address and avoid these limitations.