VR Juggler : a virtual platform for virtual reality application development

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/4498930

A Data Model for Exploration of Temporal Virtual Reality Geographic Information Systems

Geographic information systems deal with the exploration, analysis, and presentation of geo-referenced data. Virtual reality is a type of human-computer interface that comes close to the way people perceive information in the real world. Thus, virtual reality environments become the natural paradigm for extending and enhancing the presentational and exploratory capability of GIs applications in both the spatial and temporal domains. The main motivation of this thesis is the lack of a framework that properly supports the exploration of geographic information in a multi-dimensional and multi-sensorial environment (i.e., temporal virtual reality geographic information systems). This thesis introduces a model for virtual exploration of animations. Virtual exploration of animations is a framework composed of abstract data types and a user interface that allow non-expert users to control, manipulate, analyze, and present objects\u27 behaviors in a virtual-reality environment. In the model for virtual exploration of animations, the manipulation of the dynamic environment is accomplished through a set of operations performed over abstractions that represent temporal characteristics of actions. An important feature of the model is that the temporal information is treated as first-class entities and not as a mere attribute of action\u27s representations. Therefore, entities of the temporal model have their own built-in functionality and are able to represent complex temporal structures. In an environment designed for the manipulation of the temporal characteristics of actions, the knowledge of relationships among objects\u27 behaviors plays a significant role in the model. This information comes from the knowledge base of the application domain and is represented in the model through constraints among entities of the temporal model. Such constraints vary from simply relating the end points of two intervals to a complex mechanism that takes into account all relations between sequences of intervals of cyclic behaviors. The fact that the exploration of the information takes place in a virtual reality environment imposes new requirements on the animation model. This thesis introduces a new classification of objects in a VR environment and describes the associated semantics of each element in the taxonomy. These semantics are used to direct the way an object interacts with an observer and with other objects in the environment

Mente: educação, saúde e consciência

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-graduação em Engenharia de ProduçãoResumo: A compreensão da mente e da produção, organização e transmis-são do conhecimento, inclusive com o apoio das novas tecnologias da inteligência, é um campo de interesse da ergonomia cognitiva. Muitas vezes a abordagem usada para tratar destas questões tem sido uma abordagem mecanicista, que visa descrever o funcionamento da mente como uma máquina. Neste trabalho apresentamos algumas limitações da abordagem mecanicista, especialmente para lidar com aspectos fun-damentais em educação e saúde, como sensibilidade, criatividade, in-tuição, emoção, transcendência. Baseados em referenciais contempo-râneos e tradicionais - especialmente na visão epistemológica da física quântica e no veículo Vajrayana e na escola Madhyamika do budismo - procuramos mostrar novas possibilidades de compreensão da mente e da consciência e de sua relação com o corpo e o ambiente. Neste contexto, trazemos propostas conceituais e práticas para uma outra vi-são de conhecimento, ética, saúde, educação e novas tecnologias, vi-sando uma formação humana integral. O trabalho está apoiado tanto em pesquisa bibliográfica quanto na experiência pessoal do autor como professor universitário destes tópicos e estudante de meditação.Palavras-chave: ética, transdisciplinaridade, interdisciplinaridade, ergonomia cognitiva, abordagem holística, informática, física quântica, budismo, consciência

A Geometric Modeling and Animation System for Virtual Reality

Very few virtual environment design tools have been developed for nonprogrammers. Most non-programmers rely on programmers to produce their environments, or produce static environments using traditional geometrical modelers. Non-programmers, including artists and designers, have a lot to contribute to the development of virtual environments. In addition, tools developed to assist this user group will also benefit other virtual environment developers. A highly interactive 3D geometry modeling system and animation editor (JDCAD+) is presented in this paper. The motivation behind this project is to develop interactive tools for creating animated objects and importing them into virtual environments. Without such tools, creating animated objects requires coding the geometry and behavior of the object manually. Such models are usually very time consuming to code and lack detail. Coding behaviors for animation can also be very difficult due to complicated equations of motion that need to be s..