Designing for Mixed Reality Urban Exploration

This paper introduces a design framework for mixed reality urban exploration (MRUE), based on a concrete implementation in a historical city. The framework integrates different modalities, such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and haptics-audio interfaces, as well as advanced features such as personalized recommendations, social exploration, and itinerary management. It permits to address a number of concerns regarding information overload, safety, and quality of the experience, which are not sufficiently tackled in traditional non-integrated approaches. This study presents an integrated mobile platform built on top of this framework and reflects on the lessons learned

Audio-based narratives for the trenches of World War I : intertwining stories, places and interaction for an evocative experience

We report in detail the co-design, setup and evaluation of a technological intervention for a complex outdoor heritage site: a World War I fortified camp and trenches located in the natural setting of the Italian Alps. Sound was used as the only means of content delivery as it was considered particularly effective in engaging visitors at an emotional level and had the potential to enhance the physical experience of being at an historical place. The implemented prototype is visitor-aware personalised multi-point auditory narrative system that automatically plays sounds and stories depending on a combination of features such as physical location, visitor proximity and visitor preferences. The curators created for the trail multiple narratives to capture the different voices of the War. The stories are all personal accounts (as opposed to objective and detached reporting of the facts); they were designed to trigger empathy and understanding while leaving the visitors free to interpret the content and the place on the bases of their own understanding and sensitivity. The result is an evocative embodied experience that does not describe the place in a traditional sense, but leaves its interpretation open. It takes visitors beyond the traditional view of heritage as a source of information toward a sensorial experience of feeling the past. A prototype was set up and tested with a group of volunteers showing that a design that carefully combines content design, sound design, tangible and embodied interaction can bring archaeological remains, with very little to see, back to file

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Mobile Learning Revolution: Implications for Language Pedagogy

Mobile technologies including cell phones and tablets are a pervasive feature of everyday life with potential impact on teaching and learning. “Mobile pedagogy” may seem like a contradiction in terms, since mobile learning often takes place physically beyond the teacher's reach, outside the walls of the classroom. While pedagogy implies careful planning, mobility exposes learners to the unexpected. A thoughtful pedagogical response to this reality involves new conceptualizations of what is to be learned and new activity designs. This approach recognizes that learners may act in more self-determined ways beyond the classroom walls, where online interactions and mobile encounters influence their target language communication needs and interests. The chapter sets out a range of opportunities for out-of-class mobile language learning that give learners an active role and promote communication. It then considers the implications of these developments for language content and curricula and the evolving roles and competences of teachers