Generating a Topically Focused Virtual-Reality Internet

Surveys highlight that Internet users are frequently frustrated by failing to locate useful information, and by difficulty in browsing anarchically linked web-structures. We present a new Internet browsing application (called VR-net) that addresses these problems. It first identifies semantic domains consisting of tightly interconnected web-page groupings. The second part populates a 3D virtual world with these information sources, representing all relevant pages plus appropriate structural relations. Users can then easily browse through around a semantically focused virtual library

Identifying immersive environments’ most relevant research topics: an instrument to query researchers and practitioners

This paper provides an instrument for ascertaining researchers’ perspectives on the relative relevance of technological challenges facing immersive environments in view of their adoption in learning contexts, along three dimensions: access, content production, and deployment. It described its theoretical grounding and expert-review process, from a set of previously-identified challenges and expert feedback cycles. The paper details the motivation, setup, and methods employed, as well as the issues detected in the cycles and how they were addressed while developing the instrument. As a research instrument, it aims to be employed across diverse communities of research and practice, helping direct research efforts and hence contribute to wider use of immersive environments in learning, and possibly contribute towards the development of news and more adequate systems.The work presented herein has been partially funded under the European H2020 program H2020-ICT-2015, BEACONING project, grant agreement nr. 687676.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Multiuser Museum Interactives for Shared Cultural Experiences: an Agent Based Approach

Multiuser museum interactives are computer systems installed in museums or galleries which allow several visitors to interact together with digital representations of artefacts and information from the museum's collection. WeCurate is such a system, providing a multiuser curation work ow where the aim is for the users to synchronously view and discuss a selection of images, #12;nally choosing a subset of these images that the group would like to add to their group collection. The system presents two main problems: work control and group decision making. An Electronic Institution (EI) is used to model the work into scenes, where users engage in speci#12;c activities in speci#12;c scenes. A multiagent system is used to support group decision making, representing the actions of the users within the EI, where the agents advocate and support the desires of their users e.g. aggregating opinions, proposing interactions and resolutions between disagreeing group members and choosing images for discussion. Copyright © 2013, International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (www.ifaamas.org). All rights reserved.Peer Reviewe

5GNOW: Challenging the LTE Design Paradigms of Orthogonality and Synchronicity

LTE and LTE-Advanced have been optimized to deliver high bandwidth pipes to wireless users. The transport mechanisms have been tailored to maximize single cell performance by enforcing strict synchronism and orthogonality within a single cell and within a single contiguous frequency band. Various emerging trends reveal major shortcomings of those design criteria: 1) The fraction of machine-type-communications (MTC) is growing fast. Transmissions of this kind are suffering from the bulky procedures necessary to ensure strict synchronism. 2) Collaborative schemes have been introduced to boost capacity and coverage (CoMP), and wireless networks are becoming more and more heterogeneous following the non-uniform distribution of users. Tremendous efforts must be spent to collect the gains and to manage such systems under the premise of strict synchronism and orthogonality. 3) The advent of the Digital Agenda and the introduction of carrier aggregation are forcing the transmission systems to deal with fragmented spectrum. 5GNOW is an European research project supported by the European Commission within FP7 ICT Call 8. It will question the design targets of LTE and LTE-Advanced having these shortcomings in mind and the obedience to strict synchronism and orthogonality will be challenged. It will develop new PHY and MAC layer concepts being better suited to meet the upcoming needs with respect to service variety and heterogeneous transmission setups. Wireless transmission networks following the outcomes of 5GNOW will be better suited to meet the manifoldness of services, device classes and transmission setups present in envisioned future scenarios like smart cities. The integration of systems relying heavily on MTC into the communication network will be eased. The per-user experience will be more uniform and satisfying. To ensure this 5GNOW will contribute to upcoming 5G standardization.Comment: Submitted to Workshop on Mobile and Wireless Communication Systems for 2020 and beyond (at IEEE VTC 2013, Spring

A holographic collaborative medical visualization system

We report on our work on the development of a novel holographic display technology, capable of targeting multiple freely moving naked eye viewers, and of a demonstrator exploiting this technology to provide medical specialists with a truly interactive collaborative 3D environment for diagnostic discussions and/or pre-operative planning.52-5

Multiuser Museum Interactives for Shared Cultural Experiences: an Agent-based Approach

Multiuser museum interactives are computer systems installed in museums or galleries which allow several visitors to interact together with digital representations of artefacts and information from the museum's collection. WeCurate is such a system, providing a multiuser curation workflow where the aim is for the users to synchronously view and discuss a selection of images, finally choosing a subset of these images that the group would like to add to their group collection. The system presents two main problems: workflow control and group decision making. An Electronic Institution (EI) is used to model the workflow into scenes, where users engage in specific activities in specific scenes. A multiagent system is used to support group decision making, representing the actions of the users within the EI, where the agents advocate and support the desires of their users e.g. aggregating opinions, proposing interactions and resolutions between disagreeing group members and choosing images for discussion

Searching for the Semantic Internet

Search engines, directories and web browsers all deal with the Internet at the level of individual web-pages. We argue that this is too low a level of resolution for many, including the non-casual surfer, who has detailed knowledge of his/her topic of interest. We present the shopping-mall metaphor that is based on identifying tightly integrated communities of web pages, where pages procure information from each other via hyperlinks. A search operation identifies these web-page communities, rather that individual web-pages, and the communities are visualised as a Virtual Reality shopping mall - for presentation on a VRML enabled web browser. Each information outlet (shop) can contain multiple information “products” (pages) gathered around a common theme. The metaphor serves to integrate both search and visualisation phases, presenting a coherent information collection to the user - regardless of the search domain