Natural User Interface for Education in Virtual Environments

Education and self-improvement are key features of human behavior. However, learning in the physical world is not always desirable or achievable. That is how simulators came to be. There are domains where purely virtual simulators can be created in contrast to physical ones. In this research we present a novel environment for learning, using a natural user interface. We, humans, are not designed to operate and manipulate objects via keyboard, mouse or a controller. The natural way of interaction and communication is achieved through our actuators (hands and feet) and our sensors (hearing, vision, touch, smell and taste). That is the reason why it makes more sense to use sensors that can track our skeletal movements, are able to estimate our pose, and interpret our gestures. After acquiring and processing the desired – natural input, a system can analyze and translate those gestures into movement signals

From Social Simulation to Integrative System Design

As the recent financial crisis showed, today there is a strong need to gain "ecological perspective" of all relevant interactions in socio-economic-techno-environmental systems. For this, we suggested to set-up a network of Centers for integrative systems design, which shall be able to run all potentially relevant scenarios, identify causality chains, explore feedback and cascading effects for a number of model variants, and determine the reliability of their implications (given the validity of the underlying models). They will be able to detect possible negative side effect of policy decisions, before they occur. The Centers belonging to this network of Integrative Systems Design Centers would be focused on a particular field, but they would be part of an attempt to eventually cover all relevant areas of society and economy and integrate them within a "Living Earth Simulator". The results of all research activities of such Centers would be turned into informative input for political Decision Arenas. For example, Crisis Observatories (for financial instabilities, shortages of resources, environmental change, conflict, spreading of diseases, etc.) would be connected with such Decision Arenas for the purpose of visualization, in order to make complex interdependencies understandable to scientists, decision-makers, and the general public.Comment: 34 pages, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

Simulation Game Concept For AI-Enhanced Teaching Of Advanced Value Stream Analysis and Design

Value stream analysis and design is employed globally by improvement teams within industrial settings to maximize value creation and eliminate waste. For ending methodical time-centricity, research expanded the methodology to incorporate diverse facets like material flow cost accounting, information logistics, and external influence factors. These enhancements, along with increasing data volumes, are prompting a re-evaluation of how professional improvement teams should think and operate. Consequently, a transformation of the pedagogical approach used for educating students and professionals necessitates novel solutions. Conventional teaching methods such as expository lectures are widely considered inadequate in promoting knowledge retention and engagement. So far, existing research has not yet resulted in a solution that can effectively impart the methodological complexity of advanced value stream analysis and design in a motivating and vivid fashion. To address this gap, this paper applies a tailored CRISP gamification framework to develop a simulation game concept. These concept enables AI-enhanced teaching of advanced value stream analysis and design focusing on identification of multi-stage resource-efficient optimization strategies. Through integration of game-based learning with AI a trained reinforcement learning agent can act either competitively or cooperatively, creating a unique form of teaching accounting the aspects personalization, adaptive feedback, content creation, and analysis and assessment