THE UNIVERSAL MEDIA BOOK

We explore the integration of projected imagery with a physical book that acts as a tangible interface to multimedia data. Using a camera and projector pair, a tracking framework is presented wherein the 3D position of planar pages are monitored as they are turned back and forth by a user, and data is correctly warped and projected onto each page at interactive rates to provide the user with an intuitive mixed-reality experience. The book pages are blank, so traditional camera-based approaches to tracking physical features on the display surface do not apply. Instead, in each frame, feature points are independently extracted from the camera and projector images, and matched to recover the geometry of the pages in motion. The book can be loaded with multimedia content, including images and videos. In addition, volumetric datasets can be explored by removing a page from the book and using it as a tool to navigate through a virtual 3D volume

Stereoscopic Sketchpad: 3D Digital Ink

--Context-- This project looked at the development of a stereoscopic 3D environment in which a user is able to draw freely in all three dimensions. The main focus was on the storage and manipulation of the ‘digital ink’ with which the user draws. For a drawing and sketching package to be effective it must not only have an easy to use user interface, it must be able to handle all input data quickly and efficiently so that the user is able to focus fully on their drawing. --Background-- When it comes to sketching in three dimensions the majority of applications currently available rely on vector based drawing methods. This is primarily because the applications are designed to take a users two dimensional input and transform this into a three dimensional model. Having the sketch represented as vectors makes it simpler for the program to act upon its geometry and thus convert it to a model. There are a number of methods to achieve this aim including Gesture Based Modelling, Reconstruction and Blobby Inflation. Other vector based applications focus on the creation of curves allowing the user to draw within or on existing 3D models. They also allow the user to create wire frame type models. These stroke based applications bring the user closer to traditional sketching rather than the more structured modelling methods detailed. While at present the field is inundated with vector based applications mainly focused upon sketch-based modelling there are significantly less voxel based applications. The majority of these applications focus on the deformation and sculpting of voxmaps, almost the opposite of drawing and sketching, and the creation of three dimensional voxmaps from standard two dimensional pixmaps. How to actually sketch freely within a scene represented by a voxmap has rarely been explored. This comes as a surprise when so many of the standard 2D drawing programs in use today are pixel based. --Method-- As part of this project a simple three dimensional drawing program was designed and implemented using C and C++. This tool is known as Sketch3D and was created using a Model View Controller (MVC) architecture. Due to the modular nature of Sketch3Ds system architecture it is possible to plug a range of different data structures into the program to represent the ink in a variety of ways. A series of data structures have been implemented and were tested for efficiency. These structures were a simple list, a 3D array, and an octree. They have been tested for: the time it takes to insert or remove points from the structure; how easy it is to manipulate points once they are stored; and also how the number of points stored effects the draw and rendering times. One of the key issues brought up by this project was devising a means by which a user is able to draw in three dimensions while using only two dimensional input devices. The method settled upon and implemented involves using the mouse or a digital pen to sketch as one would in a standard 2D drawing package but also linking the up and down keyboard keys to the current depth. This allows the user to move in and out of the scene as they draw. A couple of user interface tools were also developed to assist the user. A 3D cursor was implemented and also a toggle, which when on, highlights all of the points intersecting the depth plane on which the cursor currently resides. These tools allow the user to see exactly where they are drawing in relation to previously drawn lines. --Results-- The tests conducted on the data structures clearly revealed that the octree was the most effective data structure. While not the most efficient in every area, it manages to avoid the major pitfalls of the other structures. The list was extremely quick to render and draw to the screen but suffered severely when it comes to finding and manipulating points already stored. In contrast the three dimensional array was able to erase or manipulate points effectively while the draw time rendered the structure effectively useless, taking huge amounts of time to draw each frame. The focus of this research was on how a 3D sketching package would go about storing and accessing the digital ink. This is just a basis for further research in this area and many issues touched upon in this paper will require a more in depth analysis. The primary area of this future research would be the creation of an effective user interface and the introduction of regular sketching package features such as the saving and loading of images

Recent Advances in Adaptive Liquid Crystal Lenses

An adaptive-focus lens is a device that is capable of tuning its focal length by means of an external stimulus. Numerous techniques for the demonstration of such devices have been reported thus far. Moving beyond traditional solutions, several new approaches have been proposed in recent years based on the use of liquid crystals, which can have a great impact in emerging applications. This work focuses on the recent advances in liquid crystal lenses with diameters larger than 1 mm. Recent demonstrations and their performance characteristics are reviewed, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the reported technologies and identifying the challenges and future prospects in the active research field of adaptive-focus liquid crystal (LC) lenses.This work was supported by Comunidad de Madrid and FEDER Program under grant S2018/NMT-4326 and the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain (TEC2013-47342-C2-2-R)

Design Patterns for Situated Visualization in Augmented Reality

Situated visualization has become an increasingly popular research area in the visualization community, fueled by advancements in augmented reality (AR) technology and immersive analytics. Visualizing data in spatial proximity to their physical referents affords new design opportunities and considerations not present in traditional visualization, which researchers are now beginning to explore. However, the AR research community has an extensive history of designing graphics that are displayed in highly physical contexts. In this work, we leverage the richness of AR research and apply it to situated visualization. We derive design patterns which summarize common approaches of visualizing data in situ. The design patterns are based on a survey of 293 papers published in the AR and visualization communities, as well as our own expertise. We discuss design dimensions that help to describe both our patterns and previous work in the literature. This discussion is accompanied by several guidelines which explain how to apply the patterns given the constraints imposed by the real world. We conclude by discussing future research directions that will help establish a complete understanding of the design of situated visualization, including the role of interactivity, tasks, and workflows.Comment: To appear in IEEE VIS 202

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) is a natural development from virtual reality (VR), which was developed several decades earlier. AR complements VR in many ways. Due to the advantages of the user being able to see both the real and virtual objects simultaneously, AR is far more intuitive, but it's not completely detached from human factors and other restrictions. AR doesn't consume as much time and effort in the applications because it's not required to construct the entire virtual scene and the environment. In this book, several new and emerging application areas of AR are presented and divided into three sections. The first section contains applications in outdoor and mobile AR, such as construction, restoration, security and surveillance. The second section deals with AR in medical, biological, and human bodies. The third and final section contains a number of new and useful applications in daily living and learning

The cockpit for the 21st century

Interactive surfaces are a growing trend in many domains. As one possible manifestation of Mark Weiser’s vision of ubiquitous and disappearing computers in everywhere objects, we see touchsensitive screens in many kinds of devices, such as smartphones, tablet computers and interactive tabletops. More advanced concepts of these have been an active research topic for many years. This has also influenced automotive cockpit development: concept cars and recent market releases show integrated touchscreens, growing in size. To meet the increasing information and interaction needs, interactive surfaces offer context-dependent functionality in combination with a direct input paradigm. However, interfaces in the car need to be operable while driving. Distraction, especially visual distraction from the driving task, can lead to critical situations if the sum of attentional demand emerging from both primary and secondary task overextends the available resources. So far, a touchscreen requires a lot of visual attention since its flat surface does not provide any haptic feedback. There have been approaches to make direct touch interaction accessible while driving for simple tasks. Outside the automotive domain, for example in office environments, concepts for sophisticated handling of large displays have already been introduced. Moreover, technological advances lead to new characteristics for interactive surfaces by enabling arbitrary surface shapes. In cars, two main characteristics for upcoming interactive surfaces are largeness and shape. On the one hand, spatial extension is not only increasing through larger displays, but also by taking objects in the surrounding into account for interaction. On the other hand, the flatness inherent in current screens can be overcome by upcoming technologies, and interactive surfaces can therefore provide haptically distinguishable surfaces. This thesis describes the systematic exploration of large and shaped interactive surfaces and analyzes their potential for interaction while driving. Therefore, different prototypes for each characteristic have been developed and evaluated in test settings suitable for their maturity level. Those prototypes were used to obtain subjective user feedback and objective data, to investigate effects on driving and glance behavior as well as usability and user experience. As a contribution, this thesis provides an analysis of the development of interactive surfaces in the car. Two characteristics, largeness and shape, are identified that can improve the interaction compared to conventional touchscreens. The presented studies show that large interactive surfaces can provide new and improved ways of interaction both in driver-only and driver-passenger situations. Furthermore, studies indicate a positive effect on visual distraction when additional static haptic feedback is provided by shaped interactive surfaces. Overall, various, non-exclusively applicable, interaction concepts prove the potential of interactive surfaces for the use in automotive cockpits, which is expected to be beneficial also in further environments where visual attention needs to be focused on additional tasks.Der Einsatz von interaktiven Oberflächen weitet sich mehr und mehr auf die unterschiedlichsten Lebensbereiche aus. Damit sind sie eine mögliche Ausprägung von Mark Weisers Vision der allgegenwärtigen Computer, die aus unserer direkten Wahrnehmung verschwinden. Bei einer Vielzahl von technischen Geräten des täglichen Lebens, wie Smartphones, Tablets oder interaktiven Tischen, sind berührungsempfindliche Oberflächen bereits heute in Benutzung. Schon seit vielen Jahren arbeiten Forscher an einer Weiterentwicklung der Technik, um ihre Vorteile auch in anderen Bereichen, wie beispielsweise der Interaktion zwischen Mensch und Automobil, nutzbar zu machen. Und das mit Erfolg: Interaktive Benutzeroberflächen werden mittlerweile serienmäßig in vielen Fahrzeugen eingesetzt. Der Einbau von immer größeren, in das Cockpit integrierten Touchscreens in Konzeptfahrzeuge zeigt, dass sich diese Entwicklung weiter in vollem Gange befindet. Interaktive Oberflächen ermöglichen das flexible Anzeigen von kontextsensitiven Inhalten und machen eine direkte Interaktion mit den Bildschirminhalten möglich. Auf diese Weise erfüllen sie die sich wandelnden Informations- und Interaktionsbedürfnisse in besonderem Maße. Beim Einsatz von Bedienschnittstellen im Fahrzeug ist die gefahrlose Benutzbarkeit während der Fahrt von besonderer Bedeutung. Insbesondere visuelle Ablenkung von der Fahraufgabe kann zu kritischen Situationen führen, wenn Primär- und Sekundäraufgaben mehr als die insgesamt verfügbare Aufmerksamkeit des Fahrers beanspruchen. Herkömmliche Touchscreens stellen dem Fahrer bisher lediglich eine flache Oberfläche bereit, die keinerlei haptische Rückmeldung bietet, weshalb deren Bedienung besonders viel visuelle Aufmerksamkeit erfordert. Verschiedene Ansätze ermöglichen dem Fahrer, direkte Touchinteraktion für einfache Aufgaben während der Fahrt zu nutzen. Außerhalb der Automobilindustrie, zum Beispiel für Büroarbeitsplätze, wurden bereits verschiedene Konzepte für eine komplexere Bedienung großer Bildschirme vorgestellt. Darüber hinaus führt der technologische Fortschritt zu neuen möglichen Ausprägungen interaktiver Oberflächen und erlaubt, diese beliebig zu formen. Für die nächste Generation von interaktiven Oberflächen im Fahrzeug wird vor allem an der Modifikation der Kategorien Größe und Form gearbeitet. Die Bedienschnittstelle wird nicht nur durch größere Bildschirme erweitert, sondern auch dadurch, dass Objekte wie Dekorleisten in die Interaktion einbezogen werden können. Andererseits heben aktuelle Technologieentwicklungen die Restriktion auf flache Oberflächen auf, so dass Touchscreens künftig ertastbare Strukturen aufweisen können. Diese Dissertation beschreibt die systematische Untersuchung großer und nicht-flacher interaktiver Oberflächen und analysiert ihr Potential für die Interaktion während der Fahrt. Dazu wurden für jede Charakteristik verschiedene Prototypen entwickelt und in Testumgebungen entsprechend ihres Reifegrads evaluiert. Auf diese Weise konnten subjektives Nutzerfeedback und objektive Daten erhoben, und die Effekte auf Fahr- und Blickverhalten sowie Nutzbarkeit untersucht werden. Diese Dissertation leistet den Beitrag einer Analyse der Entwicklung von interaktiven Oberflächen im Automobilbereich. Weiterhin werden die Aspekte Größe und Form untersucht, um mit ihrer Hilfe die Interaktion im Vergleich zu herkömmlichen Touchscreens zu verbessern. Die durchgeführten Studien belegen, dass große Flächen neue und verbesserte Bedienmöglichkeiten bieten können. Außerdem zeigt sich ein positiver Effekt auf die visuelle Ablenkung, wenn zusätzliches statisches, haptisches Feedback durch nicht-flache Oberflächen bereitgestellt wird. Zusammenfassend zeigen verschiedene, untereinander kombinierbare Interaktionskonzepte das Potential interaktiver Oberflächen für den automotiven Einsatz. Zudem können die Ergebnisse auch in anderen Bereichen Anwendung finden, in denen visuelle Aufmerksamkeit für andere Aufgaben benötigt wird

Aproximación a la evolución de la interactividad e inmersión aplicada al discurso publicitario: desde el advergaming a la realidad aumentada

Universidad de Sevilla. Máster Universitario en Comunicación y Cultur