An artificial reality environment for remote factory control and monitoring

Work has begun on the merger of two well known systems, VEOS (HITLab) and CLIPS (NASA). In the recent past, the University of Massachusetts Lowell developed a parallel version of NASA CLIPS, called P-CLIPS. This modification allows users to create smaller expert systems which are able to communicate with each other to jointly solve problems. With the merger of a VEOS message system, PCLIPS-V can now act as a group of entities working within VEOS. To display the 3D virtual world we have been using a graphics package called HOOPS, from Ithaca Software. The artificial reality environment we have set up contains actors and objects as found in our Lincoln Logs Factory of the Future project. The environment allows us to view and control the objects within the virtual world. All communication between the separate CLIPS expert systems is done through VEOS. A graphical renderer generates camera views on X-Windows devices; Head Mounted Devices are not required. This allows more people to make use of this technology. We are experimenting with different types of virtual vehicles to give the user a sense that he or she is actually moving around inside the factory looking ahead through windows and virtual monitors

SIMULATION OF THE MIXING OF INK AND WATER IN HOUDINI

Have you observed the process of one ink drop falls into water? When the ink drop spreads out in the water, it looks like the ink molecules are having a beautiful dance show. The texture is smooth and delicate as a piece of silk. This thesis uses computer graphic tools to simulate the mixing of ink and water. Anyone interested in recreating ink mixing with water effect or using this as an art form can reference this thesis paper in their own production

Rapid prototyping 3D virtual world interfaces within a virtual factory environment

On-going work into user requirements analysis using CLIPS (NASA/JSC) expert systems as an intelligent event simulator has led to research into three-dimensional (3D) interfaces. Previous work involved CLIPS and two-dimensional (2D) models. Integral to this work was the development of the University of Massachusetts Lowell parallel version of CLIPS, called PCLIPS. This allowed us to create both a Software Bus and a group problem-solving environment for expert systems development. By shifting the PCLIPS paradigm to use the VEOS messaging protocol we have merged VEOS (HlTL/Seattle) and CLIPS into a distributed virtual worlds prototyping environment (VCLIPS). VCLIPS uses the VEOS protocol layer to allow multiple experts to cooperate on a single problem. We have begun to look at the control of a virtual factory. In the virtual factory there are actors and objects as found in our Lincoln Logs Factory of the Future project. In this artificial reality architecture there are three VCLIPS entities in action. One entity is responsible for display and user events in the 3D virtual world. Another is responsible for either simulating the virtual factory or communicating with the real factory. The third is a user interface expert. The interface expert maps user input levels, within the current prototype, to control information for the factory. The interface to the virtual factory is based on a camera paradigm. The graphics subsystem generates camera views of the factory on standard X-Window displays. The camera allows for view control and object control. Control or the factory is accomplished by the user reaching into the camera views to perform object interactions. All communication between the separate CLIPS expert systems is done through VEOS

Towards music-driven procedural animation

We present our approach towards the development of a framework for the creation of music-driven procedural animations. We intend to explore the potential that elementary musical features hold for driving engaging audio-visual animations. To do so, we bring forward an integrated environment where real-time musical information is available and may be flexibly used for manipulating different aspects of a dynamic animation. In general terms, our approach consists of developing a virtual scene, populated by controllable entities, termed actors, and using scripting to define how these actors' behaviour or appearance change in response to musical information. Scripting operates by establishing associations, or mappings, between musical events, such as the ringing of notes or chords, or sound information, such as the frequency spectrum, and changes in the animation. The scenario we chose to explore is comprised of two main actors: trees and wind. Trees grow in an iterative process, and may develop leaves, while swaying in response to the wind field. The wind is represented as a vector field whose configuration and strength can be altered in real-time. Scripting then allows for synchronising these changes with musical events, providing a natural sense of harmony with the accompanying music. By having real-time access to musical information, as well as control over a reactive animation we believe to have taken a first step towards exploring a novel interdisciplinary concept with vast expressive potential.This work has been supported by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019

Design of 2D Time-Varying Vector Fields

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Space colonisation based procedural road generation

Dissertação de mestrado em Computer ScienceProcedural generation of content has been studied for quite some time and it is increasingly relevant in scientific areas and in video-game and film industries. Procedural road layout generation has been traditionally approached using L-Systems, with some works exploring alternative avenues. Although originally conceived for biological systems modelling, the adequacy of L-Systems as a base for road generation has been demonstrated in several works. In this context, this work presents an alternative approach for procedural road layout generation that is also inspired by plant generation algorithms: space colonisation. In particular, this work uses the concept of attraction points introduced in space colonisation as its base to produce road layouts, both in urban and inter-city environments. As will be shown, the usage of attraction points provides an intuitive way to parameterise a road layout. The original Space Colonization Algorithm (SCA) generates a tree like structure, but in this work, the extensions made aim to fully generate a inter-connected road network. As most previous methods the method has two phases. A first phase generates what is mostly a tree structure growing from user defined road segments. The second phase performs the inter connectivity among the roads created in the first phase. The original SCA parameters such as the killradius help to control the capillarity of the road layout, the number of attraction points used by each segment will dictate its relevance establishing a road hierarchy naturally dependent on the distribution of the attraction points on the terrain. An angle control allows the creation of grid like or more organic road layouts. The distribution of the attraction points in the terrain can be conditioned by boundary maps, containing parks, sea, rivers, and other forbidden areas. Population density maps can be used to supply an explicit probabilistic distribution to the attraction points. Flow-fields can be used to dictate the flow of the road layout. Elevation maps provide an additional restriction regarding the steepness of the roads. The tests were executed within a graphic toolbox developed simultaneously. The results are exported to a geographical information file format, GeoJSON, and then maps are rendered using a geospatial visualisation and processing framework called Mapnik. For the most part, parameter settings were intuitively reflected on the road layout and this method can be seen as a first step towards fully exploring the usage of attraction points in the context of road layout.Gradualmente a geração procedimental de conteúdo tem-se tornado cada vez mais relevante, sendo maioritariamente aplicada em industrias como a dos vídeo-jogos e cinema. No que toca à geração procedimental de redes de estradas, grande parte das abordagens em torno deste tema são baseadas em L-Systems. Embora a área de aplicação dos L-Systems tenha sido originalmente para produzir modelos de sistemas biológicos, mostrou também ser um algoritmo adequado para a geração procedimental de redes de estradas. Este trabalho apresenta uma abordagem alternativa à geração procedimental de redes de estradas que também é inspirada num algoritmo procedimental de geração de plantas, colonização espacial, utilizando o conceito de pontos de atracão como base para gerar padrões de estradas. Como será demonstrado, a utilização de pontos de atracão fornece uma maneira intuitiva de parametrizar um padrão de estradas desejado. Como a maioria dos trabalhos feitos nesta área, este método tem duas fases. A primeira fase gera uma rede semelhante a uma árvore criada a partir de um ou mais segmentos iniciais da rede determinados pelo utilizador. A segunda fase trata de interligar as estradas geradas na primeira fase. Os parâmetros iniciais do algoritmo de colonização espacial, como o kill radius, ajudam a controlar a capilaridade da rede, os pontos de atracão que influenciam cada segmento irão ditar a sua relevância na rede geral, estabelecendo a noção de hierarquia de estradas, dependendo da distribuição de pontos de atracão no terreno. O controlo do ângulo entre segmentos permite a criação de padrões de estradas tanto em forma de grelha como padrões mais orgânicos. A distribuição dos pontos de atracão no terreno pode ser influenciada por mapas de fronteira, que contem as áreas válidas e/ou inválidas, como parques, mar, rios, e outras áreas proibidas. Mapas de densidade populacional podem ser usados para fornecer uma distribuição probabilística dos pontos de atracão. Campos de forças, podem ser usados para ditar o fluxo da rede de estradas. Mapas de elevação oferecem uma restrição adicional tendo em conta a inclinação das estradas. De um modo geral, as definições de parâmetros refletiram-se de um modo intuitivo nos padrões de redes de estradas gerados, e este trabalho pode ser considerado como um primeiro passo na exploração do conceito de pontos de atracão na área da geração de redes de estradas

Design of 2D time-varying vector fields

pre-printDesign of time-varying vector fields, i.e., vector fields that can change over time, has a wide variety of important applications in computer graphics. Existing vector field design techniques do not address time-varying vector fields. In this paper, we present a framework for the design of time-varying vector fields, both for planar domains as well as manifold surfaces. Our system supports the creation and modification of various time-varying vector fields with desired spatial and temporal characteristics through several design metaphors, including streamlines, pathlines, singularity paths, and bifurcations. These design metaphors are integrated into an element-based design to generate the time-varying vector fields via a sequence of basis field summations or spatial constrained optimizations at the sampled times. The key-frame design and field deformation are also introduced to support other user design scenarios. Accordingly, a spatial-temporal constrained optimization and the time-varying transformation are employed to generate the desired fields for these two design scenarios, respectively. We apply the time-varying vector fields generated using our design system to a number of important computer graphics applications that require controllable dynamic effects, such as evolving surface appearance, dynamic scene design, steerable crowd movement, and painterly animation. Many of these are difficult or impossible to achieve via prior simulation-based methods. In these applications, the time-varying vector fields have been applied as either orientation fields or advection fields to control the instantaneous appearance or evolving trajectories of the dynamic effects