Shaping the Place - A Digital Design Heuristics Tool to Support Creation of Urban Design Proposals by Non-professionals

This paper is exploring a solution to foster civic engagement in urban design projects by applying the concepts of creativity to ICT tools. We propose a framework to support interactions between non-professionals and professionals that will ease the understanding of urban design and creation of design proposals for non-trained people and, on the other hand, offer valuable propositions and inspiration to experts. This make tool should have the presented creativity affordances known as fluency, flexibility and originality during the divergent phase of the creation process. We propose to implement a 3D collage metaphor to facilitate creative expression with 3D models. An underlying technical challenge of our application is to provide an interactive 3D mesh cutting tool to help users to express their creative potential in urban design projects. We present a non-exhaustive survey of mesh segmentation and cutting methodologies and finally, first results of implementation of a cutting algorithm

Performance Comparison of the RPL and LOADng Routing Protocols in a Home Automation Scenario

RPL, the routing protocol proposed by IETF for IPv6/6LoWPAN Low Power and Lossy Networks has significant complexity. Another protocol called LOADng, a lightweight variant of AODV, emerges as an alternative solution. In this paper, we compare the performance of the two protocols in a Home Automation scenario with heterogenous traffic patterns including a mix of multipoint-to-point and point-to-multipoint routes in realistic dense non-uniform network topologies. We use Contiki OS and Cooja simulator to evaluate the behavior of the ContikiRPL implementation and a basic non-optimized implementation of LOADng. Unlike previous studies, our results show that RPL provides shorter delays, less control overhead, and requires less memory than LOADng. Nevertheless, enhancing LOADng with more efficient flooding and a better route storage algorithm may improve its performance

A survey of real-time crowd rendering

In this survey we review, classify and compare existing approaches for real-time crowd rendering. We first overview character animation techniques, as they are highly tied to crowd rendering performance, and then we analyze the state of the art in crowd rendering. We discuss different representations for level-of-detail (LoD) rendering of animated characters, including polygon-based, point-based, and image-based techniques, and review different criteria for runtime LoD selection. Besides LoD approaches, we review classic acceleration schemes, such as frustum culling and occlusion culling, and describe how they can be adapted to handle crowds of animated characters. We also discuss specific acceleration techniques for crowd rendering, such as primitive pseudo-instancing, palette skinning, and dynamic key-pose caching, which benefit from current graphics hardware. We also address other factors affecting performance and realism of crowds such as lighting, shadowing, clothing and variability. Finally we provide an exhaustive comparison of the most relevant approaches in the field.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

VR-assisted architectural design in a heritage site: the Sagrada Família case study

Virtual Reality (VR) simulations have long been proposed to allow users to explore both yet-to-built buildings in architectural design, and ancient, remote or disappeared buildings in cultural heritage. In this paper we describe an on-going VR project on an UNESCO World Heritage Site that simultaneously addresses both scenarios: supporting architects in the task of designing the remaining parts of a large unfinished building, and simulating existing parts that define the environment that new designs must conform to. The main challenge for the team of architects is to advance towards the project completion being faithful to the original Gaudí’s project, since many plans, drawings and plaster models were lost. We analyze the main requirements for collaborative architectural design in such a unique scenario, describe the main technical challenges, and discuss the lessons learned after one year of use of the system.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Design and evaluation of a perceptually adaptive rendering system for immersive virtual reality environments

This thesis presents the design and evaluation of a perceptually adaptive rendering system for immersive virtual reality. Rendering realistic computer generated scenes can be computationally intensive. Perceptually adaptive rendering reduces the computational burden by rendering detail only where it is needed. A rendering system was designed to employ perceptually adaptive rendering techniques in environments running in immersive virtual reality. The rendering system combines lessons learned from psychology and computer science. Eccentricity from the user\u27s point of gaze is used to determine when to render detail in an immersive virtual environment, and when it can be omitted. A pilot study and a full study were carried out to evaluate the efficacy of the perceptually adaptive rendering system. The studies showed that frame rates can be improved without overly distracting the user when an eccentricity-based perceptually adaptive rendering technique is employed. Perceptually adaptive rendering techniques can be applied in older systems and enable them to display higher quality environments without reducing interactivity

Application-driven visual computing towards industry 4.0 2018

245 p.La Tesis recoge contribuciones en tres campos: 1. Agentes Virtuales Interactivos: autónomos, modulares, escalables, ubicuos y atractivos para el usuario. Estos IVA pueden interactuar con los usuarios de manera natural.2. Entornos de RV/RA Inmersivos: RV en la planificación de la producción, el diseño de producto, la simulación de procesos, pruebas y verificación. El Operario Virtual muestra cómo la RV y los Co-bots pueden trabajar en un entorno seguro. En el Operario Aumentado la RA muestra información relevante al trabajador de una manera no intrusiva. 3. Gestión Interactiva de Modelos 3D: gestión online y visualización de modelos CAD multimedia, mediante conversión automática de modelos CAD a la Web. La tecnología Web3D permite la visualización e interacción de estos modelos en dispositivos móviles de baja potencia.Además, estas contribuciones han permitido analizar los desafíos presentados por Industry 4.0. La tesis ha contribuido a proporcionar una prueba de concepto para algunos de esos desafíos: en factores humanos, simulación, visualización e integración de modelos