Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

In this paper we present evaluation results of an innovative application designed to make collaborative design review in the architectural and automotive domain more effective. Within IMPROVE, a European research project in the area of advanced displays, we are combining high resolution multi-tile displays, TabletPCs and head-mounted displays with innovative 2D and 3D Interaction Paradigms to better support collaborative mobile mixed reality design reviews. Our research and development is motivated by application scenarios in the automotive domain involving FIAT Elasis from Naples, Italy and in the architectural domain involving Page/Park architects from Glasgow, Scotland. User evaluation took place at Glasgow (UK), Naples (ITA) and Darmstadt (GER), where we tested the integrated IMPROVE prototype application. The tests were conducted based on several heuristics such as ergonomics and psychomotorial factors and they were conducted based on guidelines recommended by ISO 9241 to verify whether the developed interfaces were suitable for the applications scenarios. Evaluation results show that there is a strong demand for more interactive design review systems, allowing users greater flexibility and greater choice of input and visualization modalities as well as their combination.

This paper reports an experiment conducted to study the effects of changing scene color inside a virtual environment on the rated levels of nausea among sixty-four viewers. Current theory on visually induced motion sickness suggests that changing the color of dynamically moving visual stimuli, while keeping everything equals, will not affect the rated sickness symptoms of the viewers. Interestingly, a recent study by another authors reported that color do affect levels of visually induced motion sickness. Preliminary results of this experiment suggest that while exposure duration to the visual stimuli significantly increased the rated levels of nausea and simulator sickness questionnaire scores (<, changes of color did not affect the levels of sickness. Reasons for the conflicting results are discussed in the paper.

The present study examined the effect of global motion combinations on visually induced motion sickness, presenting global motion analyzed from the video movies that induced the VIMS incident in Japan in 2003. The stimulus movie was presented on LC displays, whose size was either 20 or 37 inch with viewing distance of one meter. The results showed that when the extent of pitch and yaw motion was reduced to one third of from the original motion of the movie had larger effect than when other types of motion was reduced the same ratio of extent. This may be related to the fact that the original movie included larger amount of yaw motion. Moreover, we found that the lager display pro-duced larger total scores, and also larger “Disorientation” sub-socres, of SSQ than the smaller display. This may suggest the discomfort for the larger and smaller displays are produced by mainly different mechanisms.

This paper sums up the previous research on Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF) individualization for three-dimensional (3D) virtual auditory display. Papers which involve experiment research, theoretical computation research, and applications of 3D virtual auditory display based on HRTFs have been reviewed. The necessity of HRTF individualization is discussed based on the review of previous experimental comparison between non-individual and individual HRTFs. At last the seven potential methods of individualization of HRTFs are summarized.

Most of facial expression recognition methods generally use single feature extraction method currently. These methods can not extract effective features for each feature area. A method of facial expression recognition based on hybrid features and fusing discrete HMMs is presented in this paper. In this method, texture feature for the eye area is extracted by using Gabor wavelet transformation, and shape variety feature for the mouth area is extracted by using AAM. In the process of recognition, discrete HMM is adopted for expression recognition in each expression area respectively. The recognition results are fused by means of integrating the probability of each expression in each area with its weight obtained by contribution analysis algorithm, and the final expression is determined as which with the maximal probability. Experiments show that our method can get high recognition rate.

In the design process of the external form of a product, sketching is applied for creating and embodying idea. Sketches are able to reflect the aesthetic sense of designers the most easily, making them the most efficient design tool. Sketches can be classified into thumbnail sketches, rough sketches, and rendering sketches according to the embodied idea. Rough sketches are used for developing the idea. In this paper, a system to support the rough sketching process and evaluate the designed product shape using 3D models constructed from the rough sketch is described. This system has a function for extracting and generating sketch lines drawn by a designer, a function for interactively modifying sketch lines, and a function for constructing 3D models from rough sketches. In order to support rough sketching, algorithms which automatically extract/generate the desired sketch-lines are proposed and implemented as a system. A method to construct 3D models form sketch lines is also proposed and implemented as a system.

The field of computer graphics is greatly increasing its overall performance enabling consequently the implementation of most of the product design process phases into virtual environments. The deriving benefits of using virtual practices in product development have been proved intrinsically highly valuable, since they foster the reduction of time to market, process uncertainty, and the translation of most prototyping activities into the virtual environment. In this paper we present the developed platform in mixed environment for ergonomic validation. Specifically we defined a methodology for testing both aspects related to design and ergonomic validation by allowing the tester to interact visually and physically with the car dashboard control devices and related interface by the mean of a rotatory haptic device. By experimental session it has been highlighted that it is possible gathering qualitative data about the design, and finding typical occlusion problems, but also quantitative data can be collected by testing the infotainment interface and the consequent users’ distraction during the device use.

This paper presents some results of a research project aiming at developing haptic tools for virtual shape modeling resembling the real tools like rakes and sandpaper used by modelers and designers in the real workshop. The developed system consists of a CAS (Computer Aided Styling) system enhanced with intuitive designer-oriented interaction tools and modalities. The system requirements have been defined on the basis of the observation of designers during their daily work and translating the way they model shapes using hands and craft tools into specifications for the modeling system based on haptic tools. The haptic tool and the interaction modality developed for exploring and sanding a surface is presented in the paper.

In emergency operations centers, operators are challenged with managing and analyzing massive amounts of information in a timely manner. With the advent of motion tracking systems and low-cost, high-performance graphics workstations, novel spatial augmented reality (AR) interfaces are becoming technologically feasible. AR interfaces have very unique characteristics as compared to other media and computer interfaces: users interact with the computer system through body motion in a volumetric space, instead of via a two-dimensional surface. We have created three prototype immersive AR computing interfaces for emergency operation center. User interacts with the information using a pair of motion tracked pinch gloves, and information is displayed through a head-tracked optical see-though head mounted display. The emergency operator uses intuitive grab and release gesture to move and manipulate the digital information in the environment analogous to interaction of everyday life objects.

Virtual and Augmented Reality have been widely used in many scientific fields for the last two decades in order to visualize complex data and information. Although both techniques are oriented to show users complex 3D environments by means of an intuitive and easy mechanism, they use to become useless to manipulate the information in an intuitive and realistic way. In this paper, we present SOROLLA, a new concept of workbench designed for virtual and augmented reality purposes and specially oriented to the fields of tele-education and engineering. Unlike other proposals, SOROLLA not only allows an easy utilization and configuration, but also shows a cost-effective immersive visualization system based on off-the-shelf elements. The initial results using our workbench and wall-system show that both efficiency and user satisfaction are higher than the ones obtained using conventional devices.