3,213 research outputs found
Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management
This book is a reprint of the Special Issue 'Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management' that was published in the journal Buildings
A Taxonomy of Freehand Grasping Patterns in Virtual Reality
Grasping is the most natural and primary interaction paradigm people perform every day, which allows us to pick up and manipulate objects around us such as drinking a cup of coffee or writing with a pen. Grasping has been highly explored in real environments, to understand and structure the way people grasp and interact with objects by presenting categories, models and theories for grasping approach. Due to the complexity of the human hand, classifying grasping knowledge to provide meaningful insights is a challenging task, which led to researchers developing grasp taxonomies to provide guidelines for emerging grasping work (such as in anthropology, robotics and hand surgery) in a systematic way.
While this body of work exists for real grasping, the nuances of grasping transfer in virtual environments is unexplored. The emerging development of robust hand tracking sensors for virtual devices now allow the development of grasp models that enable VR to simulate real grasping interactions. However, present work has not yet explored the differences and nuances that are present in virtual grasping compared to real object grasping, which means that virtual systems that create grasping models based on real grasping knowledge, might make assumptions which are yet to be proven true or untrue around the way users intuitively grasp and interact with virtual objects.
To address this, this thesis presents the first user elicitation studies to explore grasping patterns directly in VR. The first study presents main similarities and differences between real and virtual object grasping, the second study furthers this by exploring how virtual object shape influences grasping patterns, the third study focuses on visual thermal cues and how this influences grasp metrics, and the fourth study focuses on understanding other object characteristics such as stability and complexity and how they influence grasps in VR. To provide structured insights on grasping interactions in VR, the results are synthesized in the first VR Taxonomy of Grasp Types, developed following current methods for developing grasping and HCI taxonomies and re-iterated to
present an updated and more complete taxonomy.
Results show that users appear to mimic real grasping behaviour in VR, however they also illustrate that users present issues around object size estimation and generally a lower variability in grasp types is used. The taxonomy shows that only five grasps account for the majority of grasp data in VR, which can be used for computer systems aiming to achieve natural and intuitive interactions at lower computational cost. Further, findings show that virtual object characteristics such as shape, stability and complexity as well as visual cues for temperature influence grasp metrics such as aperture, category, type, location and dimension. These changes in grasping patterns together with virtual object categorisation methods can be used to inform design decisions when developing intuitive interactions and virtual objects and environments and therefore taking a step forward in achieving natural grasping interaction in VR
Volume 45: Full Issue
Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 50th Anniversary Edition: Becoming a Polytechni
Pandemic Protagonists: Viral (Re)Actions in Pandemic and Corona Fictions
During the first mandatory lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic, citizens worldwide turned to "pandemic fictions" or started to produce their own »Corona Fictions« across different media. These accounts of (previously) experienced or imagined health crises feature a great variety of protagonists and their (re)actions in response to the exceptional circumstances. The contributors to this volume take a closer look at different pandemic protagonists in fictional narratives relating to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as in existing pandemic fictions. Thereby they provide new insights into pandemic narratives from a cultural, literary, and media studies perspective from antiquity to today
A systematic literature review of decision-making and control systems for autonomous and social robots
In the last years, considerable research has been carried out to develop robots that can improve our quality of life during tedious and challenging tasks. In these contexts, robots operating without human supervision open many possibilities to assist people in their daily activities. When autonomous robots collaborate with humans, social skills are necessary for adequate communication and cooperation. Considering these facts, endowing autonomous and social robots with decision-making and control models is critical for appropriately fulfiling their initial goals. This manuscript presents a systematic review of the evolution of decision-making systems and control architectures for autonomous and social robots in the last three decades. These architectures have been incorporating new methods based on biologically inspired models and Machine Learning to enhance these systemsâ possibilities to developed societies. The review explores the most novel advances in each application area, comparing their most essential features. Additionally, we describe the current challenges of software architecture devoted to action selection, an analysis not provided in similar reviews of behavioural models for autonomous and social robots. Finally, we present the future directions that these systems can take in the future.The research leading to these results has received funding from the projects: Robots Sociales para EstimulaciĂłn FĂsica, Cognitiva y Afectiva de Mayores (ROSES), RTI2018-096338-B-I00, funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia, InnovaciĂłn y Universidades; Robots sociales para mitigar la soledad y el aislamiento en mayores (SOROLI), PID2021-123941OA-I00, funded by Agencia Estatal de InvestigaciĂłn (AEI), Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e InnovaciĂłn. This publication is part of the R&D&I project PLEC2021-007819 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR
Modern meat: the next generation of meat from cells
Modern Meat is the first textbook on cultivated meat, with contributions from over 100 experts within the cultivated meat community.
The Sections of Modern Meat comprise 5 broad categories of cultivated meat: Context, Impact, Science, Society, and World.
The 19 chapters of Modern Meat, spread across these 5 sections, provide detailed entries on cultivated meat. They extensively tour a range of topics including the impact of cultivated meat on humans and animals, the bioprocess of cultivated meat production, how cultivated meat may become a food option in Space and on Mars, and how cultivated meat may impact the economy, culture, and tradition of Asia
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Shaping and expressing politics: a comparative study of national parliament buildings within the European Union
Book chapter. No abstract available
Grounds for a Third Place : The Starbucks Experience, Sirens, and Space
My goal in this dissertation is to help demystify or âfilterâ the âStarbucks Experienceâ for a post-pandemic world, taking stock of how a multi-national company has long outgrown its humble beginnings as a wholesale coffee bean supplier to become a digitally-integrated and hypermodern cafĂ©. I look at the role Starbucks plays within the larger cultural history of the coffee house and also consider how Starbucks has been idyllically described in corporate discourse as a comfortable and discursive âthird placeâ for informal gathering, a term that also prescribes its own radical ethos as a globally recognized customer service platform. Attempting to square Starbucksâ iconography and rhetoric with a new critical methodology, in a series of interdisciplinary case studies, I examine the role Starbucksâ âthird placeâ philosophy plays within larger conversations about urban space and commodity culture, analyze Starbucks advertising, architecture and art, and trace the mythical rise of the Starbucks Siren (and the reiterations and re-imaginings of the Starbucks Siren in art and media). While in corporate rhetoric Starbucksâ âthird placeâ is depicted as an enthralling adventure, full of play, discovery, authenticity, or âromance,â I draw on critical theory to discuss how it operates today as a space of distraction, isolation, and loss
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