Realizing Semantic Virtual Environments with Ontology and Pluggable Procedures

Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) has attracted much attention recently due to the increasing number of users and potential applications. Fig. 1 shows the common components that a MUVE system may provide. Generally speaking, a MUVE refers to a virtual world that allows multiple users to log in concurrently and interact with each othe

ISReal: An Open Platform for Semantic-Based 3D Simulations in the 3D Internet

Abstract. We present the first open and cross-disciplinary 3D Internet research platform, called ISReal, for intelligent 3D simulation of real-ities. Its core innovation is the comprehensively integrated application of semantic Web technologies, semantic services, intelligent agents, ver-ification and 3D graphics for this purpose. In this paper, we focus on the interplay between its components for semantic XML3D scene query processing and semantic 3D animation service handling, as well as the semantic-based perception and action planning with coupled semantic service composition by agent-controlled avatars in a virtual world. We demonstrate the use of the implemented platform for semantic-based 3D simulations in a small virtual world example with an intelligent user avatar and discuss results of the platform performance evaluation.

Conception d'un système d'annotation pour prendre des notes en réalité virtuelle

National audienceL'industrie utilise la réalité virtuelle pour tester et concevoir des solutions d'ingénierie en amont du prototypage physique. Les systèmes d'annotations leur permettent de capturer des idées, des observations , des remarques qui peuventémergerpeuvent´peuventémerger durant des sessions de travail collaboratif. De plus, grâcè a la flexibilité du numérique, il est facile de directement lier ce type d'information (les annotations) aux composants virtuels de la maquette numérique. Le bémol est que ces annotations restent dans l'environnement virtuel, si d'autres acteurs du projet veulent accéderaccéder`accéderà ces annotations, ils sont obligés de " retourner " dans l'environnement virtuel. Nous proposons un nouveau système d'annotation réellement utilisable en réalité virtuelle. Le design de notre système a pour ambition de faciliter la circulation de l'information entre le monde physique et les environnements virtuels. Pour cela, notre conception repose sur deux aspects principaux.Premì erement, la représentation des données afin de permettre l'accessibilité et la modification des annotations depuis le monde physique et l'environnement virtuel. Deuxì emement, l'interface a ´ eté conçue pour renforcer l'impression d'emmener des documents du monde physique dans le monde virtuel et vice-versa. Notre contribution est illustrée par l'implémentation d'une preuve de concept

Adding Semantic Annotations, Navigation paths and Tour Guides to Existing Virtual Environments

Abstract. Nowadays, more Virtual Environments (VEs) are becoming available on the Web. This means that VEs are becoming accessible to a larger and more diverse audience. It also means that it is more likely that the use of these VEs (i.e. how to interact with the virtual environment and the meanings of the associated virtual objects) may be different for different groups of persons. In order for a VE to be a success on the Web, end-users should easily get familiar with the VE and understand the meanings of its virtual objects. Otherwise, the end-user may be tempted to quit the VE. Therefore, annotations and the creation of navigation paths for virtual tour guides become important to ease the use of VEs. Most of the time, this is done by VR-experts and the annotations are very poor and often only text based. This paper describes an approach and associated tool that allows a layman to add or update annotations to existing VEs. In addition, annotations are not limited to text but may also be multimedia elements, i.e. images, videos, sounds. Furthermore, the approach (and the tool) also allows easy creation of navigation paths and tour guides, which can be used to adapt a VE to the needs of a user. The paper illustrates the results by means of a real case, which is a reconstruction of a coalmine site for a museum

Applications of Virtual Reality

Information Technology is growing rapidly. With the birth of high-resolution graphics, high-speed computing and user interaction devices Virtual Reality has emerged as a major new technology in the mid 90es, last century. Virtual Reality technology is currently used in a broad range of applications. The best known are games, movies, simulations, therapy. From a manufacturing standpoint, there are some attractive applications including training, education, collaborative work and learning. This book provides an up-to-date discussion of the current research in Virtual Reality and its applications. It describes the current Virtual Reality state-of-the-art and points out many areas where there is still work to be done. We have chosen certain areas to cover in this book, which we believe will have potential significant impact on Virtual Reality and its applications. This book provides a definitive resource for wide variety of people including academicians, designers, developers, educators, engineers, practitioners, researchers, and graduate students

Intelligent Support for Exploration of Data Graphs

This research investigates how to support a user’s exploration through data graphs generated from semantic databases in a way leading to expanding the user’s domain knowledge. To be effective, approaches to facilitate exploration of data graphs should take into account the utility from a user’s point of view. Our work focuses on knowledge utility – how useful exploration paths through a data graph are for expanding the user’s knowledge. The main goal of this research is to design an intelligent support mechanism to direct the user to ‘good’ exploration paths through big data graphs for knowledge expansion. We propose a new exploration support mechanism underpinned by the subsumption theory for meaningful learning, which postulates that new knowledge is grasped by starting from familiar concepts in the graph which serve as knowledge anchors from where links to new knowledge are made. A core algorithmic component for adapting the subsumption theory for generating exploration paths is the automatic identification of Knowledge Anchors in a Data Graph (KADG). Several metrics for identifying KADG and the corresponding algorithms for implementation have been developed and evaluated against human cognitive structures. A subsumption algorithm which utilises KADG for generating exploration paths for knowledge expansion is presented and evaluated in the context of a semantic data browser in a musical instrument domain. The resultant exploration paths are evaluated in a controlled user study to examine whether they increase the users’ knowledge as compared to free exploration. The findings show that exploration paths using knowledge anchors and subsumption lead to significantly higher increase in the users’ conceptual knowledge. The approach can be adopted in applications providing data graph exploration to facilitate learning and sensemaking of layman users who are not fully familiar with the domain presented in the data graph