Virtual reality as an educational tool in interior architecture

Ankara : The Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design and the Institute of Fine Arts of Bilkent Univ., 1997.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 1997.Includes bibliographical references.This thesis discusses the use of virtual reality technology as an educational tool in interior architectural design. As a result of this discussion, it is proposed that virtual reality can be of use in aiding three-dimensional design and visualization, and may speed up the design process. It may also be of help in getting the designers/students more involved in their design projects. Virtual reality can enhance the capacity of designers to design in three dimensions. The virtual reality environment used in designing should be capable of aiding both the design and the presentation process. The tradeoffs of the technology, newly emerging trends and future directions in virtual reality are discussed.Aktaş, OrkunM.S

A shuttle and space station manipulator system for assembly, docking, maintenance, cargo handling and spacecraft retrieval (preliminary design). Volume 2: Concept development and selection

The overall program background, the various system concepts considered, and the rationale for the selected design are described. The concepts for each subsystem are also described and compared. Details are given for the requirements, boom configuration and dynamics, actuators, man/machine interface and control, visual system, control system, environmental control and life support, data processing, and materials

Design and Development of a Research Framework for Prototyping Control Tower Augmented Reality Tools

The purpose of the air traffic management system is to ensure the safe and efficient flow of air traffic. Therefore, while augmenting efficiency, throughput and capacity in airport operations, attention has rightly been placed on doing it in a safe manner. In the control tower, many advances in operational safety have come in the form of visualization tools for tower controllers. However, there is a paradox in developing such systems to increase controllers' situational awareness: by creating additional computer displays, the controller's vision is pulled away from the outside view and the time spent looking down at the monitors is increased. This reduces their situational awareness by forcing them to mentally and physically switch between the head-down equipment and the outside view. This research is based on the idea that augmented reality may be able to address this issue. The augmented reality concept has become increasingly popular over the past decade and is being proficiently used in many fields, such as entertainment, cultural heritage, aviation, military & defense. This know-how could be transferred to air traffic control with a relatively low effort and substantial benefits for controllers’ situation awareness. Research on this topic is consistent with SESAR objectives of increasing air traffic controllers’ situation awareness and enable up to 10 % of additional flights at congested airports while still increasing safety and efficiency. During the Ph.D., a research framework for prototyping augmented reality tools was set up. This framework consists of methodological tools for designing the augmented reality overlays, as well as of hardware and software equipment to test them. Several overlays have been designed and implemented in a simulated tower environment, which is a virtual reconstruction of Bologna airport control tower. The positive impact of such tools was preliminary assessed by means of the proposed methodology

Visualization and Human-Machine Interaction

The digital age offers a lot of challenges in the eld of visualization. Visual imagery has been effectively used to communicate messages through the ages, to express both abstract and concrete ideas. Today, visualization has ever-expanding applications in science, engineering, education, medicine, entertainment and many other areas. Different areas of research contribute to the innovation in the eld of interactive visualization, such as data science, visual technology, Internet of things and many more. Among them, two areas of renowned importance are Augmented Reality and Visual Analytics. This thesis presents my research in the fields of visualization and human-machine interaction. The purpose of the proposed work is to investigate existing solutions in the area of Augmented Reality (AR) for maintenance. A smaller section of this thesis presents a minor research project on an equally important theme, Visual Analytics. Overall, the main goal is to identify the most important existing problems and then design and develop innovative solutions to address them. The maintenance application domain has been chosen since it is historically one of the first fields of application for Augmented Reality and it offers all the most common and important challenges that AR can arise, as described in chapter 2. Since one of the main problem in AR application deployment is reconfigurability of the application, a framework has been designed and developed that allows the user to create, deploy and update in real-time AR applications. Furthermore, the research focused on the problems related to hand-free interaction, thus investigating the area of speech-recognition interfaces and designing innovative solutions to address the problems of intuitiveness and robustness of the interface. On the other hand, the area of Visual Analytics has been investigated: among the different areas of research, multidimensional data visualization, similarly to AR, poses specific problems related to the interaction between the user and the machine. An analysis of the existing solutions has been carried out in order to identify their limitations and to point out possible improvements. Since this analysis delineates the scatterplot as a renowned visualization tool worthy of further research, different techniques for adapting its usage to multidimensional data are analyzed. A multidimensional scatterplot has been designed and developed in order to perform a comparison with another multidimensional visualization tool, the ScatterDice. The first chapters of my thesis describe my investigations in the area of Augmented Reality for maintenance. Chapter 1 provides definitions for the most important terms and an introduction to AR. The second chapter focuses on maintenance, depicting the motivations that led to choose this application domain. Moreover, the analysis concerning open problems and related works is described along with the methodology adopted to design and develop the proposed solutions. The third chapter illustrates how the adopted methodology has been applied in order to assess the problems described in the previous one. Chapter 4 describes the methodology adopted to carry out the tests and outlines the experimental results, whereas the fifth chapter illustrates the conclusions and points out possible future developments. Chapter 6 describes the analysis and research work performed in the eld of Visual Analytics, more specifically on multidimensional data visualizations. Overall, this thesis illustrates how the proposed solutions address common problems of visualization and human-machine interaction, such as interface de- sign, robustness of the interface and acceptance of new technology, whereas other problems are related to the specific research domain, such as pose tracking and reconfigurability of the procedure for the AR domain

Sonic Interactions in Virtual Environments

This open access book tackles the design of 3D spatial interactions in an audio-centered and audio-first perspective, providing the fundamental notions related to the creation and evaluation of immersive sonic experiences. The key elements that enhance the sensation of place in a virtual environment (VE) are: Immersive audio: the computational aspects of the acoustical-space properties of Virutal Reality (VR) technologies Sonic interaction: the human-computer interplay through auditory feedback in VE VR systems: naturally support multimodal integration, impacting different application domains Sonic Interactions in Virtual Environments will feature state-of-the-art research on real-time auralization, sonic interaction design in VR, quality of the experience in multimodal scenarios, and applications. Contributors and editors include interdisciplinary experts from the fields of computer science, engineering, acoustics, psychology, design, humanities, and beyond. Their mission is to shape an emerging new field of study at the intersection of sonic interaction design and immersive media, embracing an archipelago of existing research spread in different audio communities and to increase among the VR communities, researchers, and practitioners, the awareness of the importance of sonic elements when designing immersive environments

Presence 2005: the eighth annual international workshop on presence, 21-23 September, 2005 University College London (Conference proceedings)

OVERVIEW (taken from the CALL FOR PAPERS) Academics and practitioners with an interest in the concept of (tele)presence are invited to submit their work for presentation at PRESENCE 2005 at University College London in London, England, September 21-23, 2005. The eighth in a series of highly successful international workshops, PRESENCE 2005 will provide an open discussion forum to share ideas regarding concepts and theories, measurement techniques, technology, and applications related to presence, the psychological state or subjective perception in which a person fails to accurately and completely acknowledge the role of technology in an experience, including the sense of 'being there' experienced by users of advanced media such as virtual reality. The concept of presence in virtual environments has been around for at least 15 years, and the earlier idea of telepresence at least since Minsky's seminal paper in 1980. Recently there has been a burst of funded research activity in this area for the first time with the European FET Presence Research initiative. What do we really know about presence and its determinants? How can presence be successfully delivered with today's technology? This conference invites papers that are based on empirical results from studies of presence and related issues and/or which contribute to the technology for the delivery of presence. Papers that make substantial advances in theoretical understanding of presence are also welcome. The interest is not solely in virtual environments but in mixed reality environments. Submissions will be reviewed more rigorously than in previous conferences. High quality papers are therefore sought which make substantial contributions to the field. Approximately 20 papers will be selected for two successive special issues for the journal Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. PRESENCE 2005 takes place in London and is hosted by University College London. The conference is organized by ISPR, the International Society for Presence Research and is supported by the European Commission's FET Presence Research Initiative through the Presencia and IST OMNIPRES projects and by University College London

Explaining Self-Motion Perception using Virtual Reality in Patients with Ocular Disease

Safe mobility requires accurate object and self-motion perception. This involves processing retinal motion generated by optic flow (which change with eye and head movements) and correctly integrating this with vestibular and proprioceptive cues. Poor sensory feedback of self-motion can lead to increased risks of accidents which impacts quality of life. This is further problematic for those with visual deficits, such as central or peripheral vision loss or impaired binocular vision. The expansion of healthcare into using virtual reality (VR) has allowed the assessment of sensory and motor performance in a safe environment. An advantage of VR is its ability to generate vection (perceived illusory self-motion) and presence (sense of being ‘there’). However, a limitation is the potential to develop cybersickness. Initially, the project examined how binocular vision influences vection in a virtual environment. Observers with or without stereopsis (ability to judge depth binocularly) were asked to compare their perceptual experiences based on psychophysical judgements of magnitude estimation. The findings suggest that the absence of stereopsis impairs accurate judgement of self-motion and reduces perceived presence, however, it was protective for cybersickness. The project then examined the impact of central and peripheral vision loss on self-motion perception by comparing those with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and glaucoma respectively. Effects of these visual deficits on sensory conflicts involving visual-vestibular interactions was then assessed. Sensory conflict was imposed by altering the gain of simulated head linear head position and angular orientation to be either compatible or incompatible with head movement in two separate experiments. Fixation was used to control gaze during changes in angular head orientation. Vection and presence was higher in those with AMD, compared with those with glaucoma, indicating the importance of regional specificity in visual deficits on self-motion perception. Across studies, vection and presence were predominantly visually mediated despite changes in visual-vestibular sensory conflict. The vestibular system, however, appeared to play a larger role in developing cybersickness. The altered perception of self-motion may worsen mobility, particularly with disease progression. We therefore provide a framework and recommendations for a multidisciplinary patient-centric model of care to maximise quality of life

Sonic Interactions in Virtual Environments

This open access book tackles the design of 3D spatial interactions in an audio-centered and audio-first perspective, providing the fundamental notions related to the creation and evaluation of immersive sonic experiences. The key elements that enhance the sensation of place in a virtual environment (VE) are: Immersive audio: the computational aspects of the acoustical-space properties of Virutal Reality (VR) technologies Sonic interaction: the human-computer interplay through auditory feedback in VE VR systems: naturally support multimodal integration, impacting different application domains Sonic Interactions in Virtual Environments will feature state-of-the-art research on real-time auralization, sonic interaction design in VR, quality of the experience in multimodal scenarios, and applications. Contributors and editors include interdisciplinary experts from the fields of computer science, engineering, acoustics, psychology, design, humanities, and beyond. Their mission is to shape an emerging new field of study at the intersection of sonic interaction design and immersive media, embracing an archipelago of existing research spread in different audio communities and to increase among the VR communities, researchers, and practitioners, the awareness of the importance of sonic elements when designing immersive environments

Conference on Intelligent Robotics in Field, Factory, Service, and Space (CIRFFSS 1994), volume 1

The AIAA/NASA Conference on Intelligent Robotics in Field, Factory, Service, and Space (CIRFFSS '94) was originally proposed because of the strong belief that America's problems of global economic competitiveness and job creation and preservation can partly be solved by the use of intelligent robotics, which are also required for human space exploration missions. Individual sessions addressed nuclear industry, agile manufacturing, security/building monitoring, on-orbit applications, vision and sensing technologies, situated control and low-level control, robotic systems architecture, environmental restoration and waste management, robotic remanufacturing, and healthcare applications