Multimodal Interaction in a Haptic Environment

In this paper we investigate the introduction of haptics in a multimodal tutoring environment. In this environment a haptic device is used to control a virtual piece of sterile cotton and a virtual injection needle. Speech input and output is provided to interact with a virtual tutor, available as a talking head, and a virtual patient. We introduce the haptic tasks and how different agents in the multi-agent system are made responsible for them. Notes are provided about the way we introduce an affective model in the tutor agent

Barnes Hospital Bulletin

https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/bjc_barnes_bulletin/1266/thumbnail.jp

Computer-assisted transcription and analysis of speech

The two papers included in this volume have developed from work with the CHILDES tools and the Media Editor in the two research projects, "Second language acquisition of German by Russian learners", sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, from 1998 to 1999 (directed by Ursula Stephany, University of Cologne, and Wolfgang Klein, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen) and "The age factor in the acquisition of German as a second language", sponsored by the German Science Foundation (DFG), Bonn, since 2000 (directed by Ursula Stephany, University of Cologne, and Christine Dimroth, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen). The CHILDES Project has been developed and is being continuously improved at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, under the supervision of Brian MacWhinney. Having used the CHILDES tools for more than ten years for transcribing and analyzing Greek child data there it was no question that I would also use them for research into the acquisition of German as a second language and analyze the big amount of spontaneous speech gathered from two Russian girls with the help of the CLAN programs. When in the spring of 1997, Steven Gillis from the University of Antwerp (in collaboration with Gert Durieux) developed a lexicon-based automatic coding system based on the CLAN program MOR and suitable for coding languages with richer morphologies than English, such as Modern Greek. Coding huge amounts of data then became much quicker and more comfortable so that I decided to adopt this system for German as well. The paper "Working with the CHILDES Tools" is based on two earlier manuscripts which have grown out of my research on Greek child language and the many CHILDES workshops taught in Germany, Greece, Portugal, and Brazil over the years. Its contents have now been adapted to the requirements of research into the acquisition of German as a second language and for use on Windows

BlogForever D5.1: Design and Specification of Case Studies

This document presents the specification and design of six case studies for testing the BlogForever platform implementation process. The report explains the data collection plan where users of the repository will provide usability feedback through questionnaires as well as details of scalability analysis through the creation of specific log files analytics. The case studies will investigate the sustainability of the platform, that it meets potential users’ needs and that is has an important long term impact

Movement in cluttered virtual environments

Imagine walking around a cluttered room but then having little idea of where you have traveled. This frequently happens when people move around small virtual environments (VEs), searching for targets. In three experiments, participants searched small-scale VEs using different movement interfaces, collision response algorithms, and fields of view. Participants' searches were most efficient in terms of distance traveled, time taken, and path followed when the simplest form of movement (view direction) was used in conjunction with a response algorithm that guided ("slipped") them around obstacles when collisions occurred. Unexpectedly, and in both immersive and desktop VEs, participants often had great difficulty finding the targets, despite the fact that participants could see the whole VE if they stood in one place and turned around. Thus, the trivial real-world task used in the present study highlights a basic problem with current VE systems