61 research outputs found

    A Bandwidth-Conserving Architecture for Crawling Virtual Worlds

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    A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit via avatars. Content in virtual worlds such as Second Life or OpenSimulator is increasingly presented using three-dimensional (3D) dynamic presentation technologies that challenge traditional search technologies. As 3D environments become both more prevalent and more fragmented, the need for a data crawler and distributed search service will continue to grow. By increasing the visibility of content across virtual world servers in order to better collect and integrate the 3D data we can also improve the crawling and searching efficiency and accuracy by avoiding crawling unchanged regions or downloading unmodified objects that already exist in our collection. This will help to save bandwidth resources and Internet traffic during the content collection and indexing and, for a fixed amount of bandwidth, maximize the freshness of the collection. This work presents a new services paradigm for virtual world crawler interaction that is co-operative and exploits information about 3D objects in the virtual world. Our approach supports analyzing redundant information crawled from virtual worlds in order to decrease the amount of data collected by crawlers, keep search engine collections up to date, and provide an efficient mechanism for collecting and searching information from multiple virtual worlds. Experimental results with data crawled from Second Life servers demonstrate that our approach provides the ability to save crawling bandwidth consumption, to explore more hidden objects and new regions to be crawled that facilitate the search service in virtual worlds

    A bot spooler architecture to integrate virtual worlds with e-learning management systems for corporate training

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    Joining efforts of academic and corporate teams, we developed an integration architecture - MULTIS - that enables corporate e-learning managers to use a Learning Management System (LMS) for management of educational activities in virtual worlds. This architecture was then implemented for the Formare LMS. In this paper we present this architecture and concretizations of its implementation for the Second Life Grid/OpenSimulator virtual world platforms. Current systems are focused on activities managed by individual trainers, rather than groups of trainers and large numbers of trainees: they focus on providing the LMS with information about educational activities taking place in a virtual world and/or being able to access within the virtual world some of the information stored in the LMS, and disregard the streamlining of activity setup and data collection in multi-trainer contexts, among other administrative issues. This architecture aims to overcome the limitations of existing systems for organizational management of corporate e-learning activities.Portugal Telecom Inovação (atualmente, Altice Labs

    Development of a mechanical maintenance training simulator in OpenSimulator for F-16 aircraft engines

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    Mechanical maintenance of F-16 engines is carried out as a team effort involving 3–4 skilled engine technicians, but the details of its procedures and requisites change constantly, to improve safety, optimize resources, and respond to knowledge learned from field outcomes. This provides a challenge for development of training simulators, since simulated actions risk becoming obsolete rapidly and require costly reimplementation. This paper presents the development of a 3D mechanical maintenance training simulator for this context, using a low-cost simulation platform and a software architecture that separates simulation control from simulation visualization, in view of enabling more agile adaptation of simulators. This specific simulator aims to enable technician training to be enhanced with cooperation and context prior to the training phase with actual physical engines. We provide data in support of the feasibility of this approach, describing the requirements that were identified with the Portuguese Air Force, the overall software architecture of the system, the current stage of the prototype, and the outcomes of the first field tests with users

    Overcoming Roadblocks in Introducing Virtual World Technology to High Schools

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    The EAST (Environmental And Spatial Technology) Initiative is a non-profit educational organization that provides students in over two hundred schools in eight states with access to advanced computing technologies for the purpose of enabling students to develop technical skills early and to produce solutions to local community problems. Although many high-end technologies are available through EAST, they are desktop solutions that individual students use and there are none that enable students within a school or between schools to collaborate. This thesis is a saga that documents the identification and removal of many roadblocks to introducing a 3D multi-user virtual simulation platform known as OpenSimulator into an EAST high school, Greenland High, located in Northwest Arkansas. The end result seemed compelling, simple and achievable -- with OpenSimulator, students from one or many EAST Labs would be able connect, chat, and work together within the same or nearby virtual areas to build models of (parts and aspects of) their communities. But getting to the point where students can begin to use this platform involved solving cost, safety, firewall, administrative, sustainability, and other puzzles. Most of this thesis is concerned with solving problems up to introducing OpenSimulator to Greenland -- more work is needed in understanding whether and how this kind of technology will benefit high school computing programs like EAST

    A Proposal to Create Learning Environments in Virtual Worlds Integrating Advanced Educative Resources

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    Social Networking has been a global consumer phenomenon during the last few years. Online communities are changing the way people behave, share and interact within their daily lives. Most of such communities are mainly focused on sharing contents and communicating using a traditional web interface. However, social virtual worlds are computer-simulated environments that the users can "inhabit" and in which they can interact and create objects. Education is one of the most interesting applications of virtual worlds, as their flexibility can be exploited in order to create heterogeneous groups from all over the world who can collaborate synchronously in different virtual spaces. In this paper, we highlight the potential of virtual worlds as an educative tool and propose a model to create learning environments within Second Life or OpenSimulator combining the Moodle learning management system, embodied conversational metabots, and programmable 3D objects. We have implemented the proposal in a learning system for several subjects of the Computer Science degree in our university and show that it fostered engagement and collaboration and helped the students to better understand complex concepts.Research funded by projects CICYT TIN 2011-28620-C02-01, CICYT TEC 2011-28626 C02-02, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485), and DPS 2008-07029-C02-02.Enviad

    Enhancing trustability in MMOGs environments

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    Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs; e.g., World of Warcraft), virtual worlds (VW; e.g., Second Life), social networks (e.g., Facebook) strongly demand for more autonomic, security, and trust mechanisms in a way similar to humans do in the real life world. As known, this is a difficult matter because trusting in humans and organizations depends on the perception and experience of each individual, which is difficult to quantify or measure. In fact, these societal environments lack trust mechanisms similar to those involved in humans-to-human interactions. Besides, interactions mediated by compute devices are constantly evolving, requiring trust mechanisms that keep the pace with the developments and assess risk situations. In VW/MMOGs, it is widely recognized that users develop trust relationships from their in-world interactions with others. However, these trust relationships end up not being represented in the data structures (or databases) of such virtual worlds, though they sometimes appear associated to reputation and recommendation systems. In addition, as far as we know, the user is not provided with a personal trust tool to sustain his/her decision making while he/she interacts with other users in the virtual or game world. In order to solve this problem, as well as those mentioned above, we propose herein a formal representation of these personal trust relationships, which are based on avataravatar interactions. The leading idea is to provide each avatar-impersonated player with a personal trust tool that follows a distributed trust model, i.e., the trust data is distributed over the societal network of a given VW/MMOG. Representing, manipulating, and inferring trust from the user/player point of view certainly is a grand challenge. When someone meets an unknown individual, the question is “Can I trust him/her or not?”. It is clear that this requires the user to have access to a representation of trust about others, but, unless we are using an open source VW/MMOG, it is difficult —not to say unfeasible— to get access to such data. Even, in an open source system, a number of users may refuse to pass information about its friends, acquaintances, or others. Putting together its own data and gathered data obtained from others, the avatar-impersonated player should be able to come across a trust result about its current trustee. For the trust assessment method used in this thesis, we use subjective logic operators and graph search algorithms to undertake such trust inference about the trustee. The proposed trust inference system has been validated using a number of OpenSimulator (opensimulator.org) scenarios, which showed an accuracy increase in evaluating trustability of avatars. Summing up, our proposal aims thus to introduce a trust theory for virtual worlds, its trust assessment metrics (e.g., subjective logic) and trust discovery methods (e.g., graph search methods), on an individual basis, rather than based on usual centralized reputation systems. In particular, and unlike other trust discovery methods, our methods run at interactive rates.MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games, como por exemplo, World of Warcraft), mundos virtuais (VW, como por exemplo, o Second Life) e redes sociais (como por exemplo, Facebook) necessitam de mecanismos de confiança mais autónomos, capazes de assegurar a segurança e a confiança de uma forma semelhante à que os seres humanos utilizam na vida real. Como se sabe, esta não é uma questão fácil. Porque confiar em seres humanos e ou organizações depende da percepção e da experiência de cada indivíduo, o que é difícil de quantificar ou medir à partida. Na verdade, esses ambientes sociais carecem dos mecanismos de confiança presentes em interacções humanas presenciais. Além disso, as interacções mediadas por dispositivos computacionais estão em constante evolução, necessitando de mecanismos de confiança adequados ao ritmo da evolução para avaliar situações de risco. Em VW/MMOGs, é amplamente reconhecido que os utilizadores desenvolvem relações de confiança a partir das suas interacções no mundo com outros. No entanto, essas relações de confiança acabam por não ser representadas nas estruturas de dados (ou bases de dados) do VW/MMOG específico, embora às vezes apareçam associados à reputação e a sistemas de reputação. Além disso, tanto quanto sabemos, ao utilizador não lhe é facultado nenhum mecanismo que suporte uma ferramenta de confiança individual para sustentar o seu processo de tomada de decisão, enquanto ele interage com outros utilizadores no mundo virtual ou jogo. A fim de resolver este problema, bem como os mencionados acima, propomos nesta tese uma representação formal para essas relações de confiança pessoal, baseada em interacções avatar-avatar. A ideia principal é fornecer a cada jogador representado por um avatar uma ferramenta de confiança pessoal que segue um modelo de confiança distribuída, ou seja, os dados de confiança são distribuídos através da rede social de um determinado VW/MMOG. Representar, manipular e inferir a confiança do ponto de utilizador/jogador, é certamente um grande desafio. Quando alguém encontra um indivíduo desconhecido, a pergunta é “Posso confiar ou não nele?”. É claro que isto requer que o utilizador tenha acesso a uma representação de confiança sobre os outros, mas, a menos que possamos usar uma plataforma VW/MMOG de código aberto, é difícil — para não dizer impossível — obter acesso aos dados gerados pelos utilizadores. Mesmo em sistemas de código aberto, um número de utilizadores pode recusar partilhar informações sobre seus amigos, conhecidos, ou sobre outros. Ao juntar seus próprios dados com os dados obtidos de outros, o utilizador/jogador representado por um avatar deve ser capaz de produzir uma avaliação de confiança sobre o utilizador/jogador com o qual se encontra a interagir. Relativamente ao método de avaliação de confiança empregue nesta tese, utilizamos lógica subjectiva para a representação da confiança, e também operadores lógicos da lógica subjectiva juntamente com algoritmos de procura em grafos para empreender o processo de inferência da confiança relativamente a outro utilizador. O sistema de inferência de confiança proposto foi validado através de um número de cenários Open-Simulator (opensimulator.org), que mostrou um aumento na precisão na avaliação da confiança de avatares. Resumindo, a nossa proposta visa, assim, introduzir uma teoria de confiança para mundos virtuais, conjuntamente com métricas de avaliação de confiança (por exemplo, a lógica subjectiva) e em métodos de procura de caminhos de confiança (com por exemplo, através de métodos de pesquisa em grafos), partindo de uma base individual, em vez de se basear em sistemas habituais de reputação centralizados. Em particular, e ao contrário de outros métodos de determinação do grau de confiança, os nossos métodos são executados em tempo real

    An approach to develop intelligent learning environments by means of immersive virtual worlds

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    Merging Immersive Virtual Environments, Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence techniques provides a number of advantages to develop Intelligent Environments for multiple applications. This paper is focused on the application of these technologies to develop intelligent learning environments. Education is one of the most interesting applications of immersive virtual environments, as their flexibility can be exploited in order to create heterogeneous groups from all over the world who can collaborate synchronously in different virtual spaces. We highlight the potential of virtual worlds as an educative tool and propose a model to create learning environments within Second Life or OpenSimulator combining the Moodle learning management system, embodied conversational metabots, and programmable 3D objects. Our proposal has been applied in several subjects of the Computer Science degree in the Carlos III University of Madrid. The results of the evaluation show that developed learning environment fosters engagement and collaboration and helps students to better understand complex concepts.This work was supported in part by Projects MINECO TEC2012-37832-C02-01, CICYT TEC2011-28626-C02-02, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485).Publicad

    An approach to develop intelligent learning environments by means of immersive virtual worlds

    Get PDF
    Merging Immersive Virtual Environments, Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence techniques provides a number of advantages to develop Intelligent Environments for multiple applications. This paper is focused on the application of these technologies to develop intelligent learning environments. Education is one of the most interesting applications of immersive virtual environments, as their flexibility can be exploited in order to create heterogeneous groups from all over the world who can collaborate synchronously in different virtual spaces. We highlight the potential of virtual worlds as an educative tool and propose a model to create learning environments within Second Life or OpenSimulator combining the Moodle learning management system, embodied conversational metabots, and programmable 3D objects. Our proposal has been applied in several subjects of the Computer Science degree in the Carlos III University of Madrid. The results of the evaluation show that developed learning environment fosters engagement and collaboration and helps students to better understand complex concepts.Spanish Government TEC2012-37832-C02-01Consejo Interinstitucional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CICYT) TEC2011-28626-C02-02Project CAM CONTEXTS S2009/TIC-148

    A review of management tools for OpenSimulator

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    "Conference on Videogame Sciences and Arts", realizada no Porto de 21-22 de novembro de 2018To host OpenSimulator virtual world servers at educational institutions, system administrators find at their disposal a diversity of web-based management systems with different sets of features. To support the selection among current management tools and provide a baseline from which to identify subsequent development needs, we installed and evaluated 4 of these systems (WiFi pages, OSMW, MWI and jOpenSim), analysing and comparing their features. WiFi pages only provides account-management features. MWI has mostly the same features, but also provides systems administrators with the option of creating their own management website. OSMW has account-management and maintenance features, such as log management and editing of configuration files. jOpenSim provides features for account and event management and feature for generating some actions within virtual world, such as broadcasting a message to all regions. From matching the identified features with the literature-reported requirements for virtual world deployment at educational organizations, we conclude that there is no management tool that fulfils all the functional requirements reported in the literature and, therefore, that the adoption of current tools by system administrators will always requires manually performing some of the administrative tasks. We therefore call for development of novel, more encompassing administrative tools for OpenSimulator virtual worlds.This research has been partially financed by the European Commission [BEACONING H2020ICT-2015-687676]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Interoperability in virtual world

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    Recently we have seen a growing use of virtual worlds (VW) in many areas like marketing, e-commerce, games, social interaction and education. The virtual worlds offer many resources to engage their users (named avatar) like freedom of movements, teleport yourself to other local, communicate with other inhabitants (both text and voice messages), capacity to create, modify and destroy objects and the possibility of programming behaviors to these objects via scripts. The amount of resources "in" the world is great. This measure will be bigger if adding the resources "out" the world. Both resources (in and out) need ways to communication. Our interest on VW applications to education goals, rises the necessity of understand the model, protocols and ways of communication these "virtual worlds" with the "real worlds".XI Workshop tecnología informática aplicada en educaciónRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI
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