Through the combining glass

Reflective optical combiners like beam splitters and two way mirrors are used in AR to overlap digital contents on the users' hands or bodies. Augmentations are usually unidirectional, either reflecting virtual contents on the user's body (Situated Augmented Reality) or augmenting user's reflections with digital contents (AR mirrors). But many other novel possibilities remain unexplored. For example, users' hands, reflected inside a museum AR cabinet, can allow visitors to interact with the artifacts exhibited. Projecting on the user's hands as their reflection cuts through the objects can be used to reveal objects' internals. Augmentations from both sides are blended by the combiner, so they are consistently seen by any number of users, independently of their location or, even, the side of the combiner through which they are looking. This paper explores the potential of optical combiners to merge the space in front and behind them. We present this design space, identify novel augmentations/interaction opportunities and explore the design space using three prototypes

Design of Interactive Service Robots applying methods of Systems Engineering and Decision Making

Interaktive Service Roboter werden heute bereits in einigen Anwendungsszenarien eingesetzt, in denen sie beispielsweise Menschen durch Gebäude geleiten oder bei häuslichen Aufgaben unterstützen. Dennoch gibt es bislang kein System, das den erwarteten Marktdurchbruch geschafft hat. Die hohe Komplexität solcher Systeme und vielfältige Anforderungen durch Benutzer und Betreiber erschweren die Entwicklung von erfolgreichen Service Robotern. In dieser Arbeit wurden zwei interaktive Service Roboter entwickelt, die das Potential haben, die beschriebenen Hinderungsgründe für einen breiten Einsatz zu überwinden. Das erste Robotersystem wurde als Shopping Roboter für Baumärkte entwickelt, in denen es Kunden zu gesuchten Produkten führt. Das zweite System dient als interaktiver Pflegeroboter älteren Menschen in häuslicher Umgebung bei der Bewältigung täglicher Aufgaben. Diese Arbeit beschreibt die Realisierung der Embedded Systems beider Robotersysteme und umfasst insbesondere die Entwicklung der Low-Level System Architekturen, Energie Management Systeme, Kommunikationssysteme, Sensorsysteme, sowie ausgewählte Aspekte der mechanischen Umsetzung. Die Entwicklung einer Vielzahl von Steuerungsmodulen, notwendig für die Realisierung interaktiver Service Roboter, wird beschrieben. Die vorliegende Arbeit verwendet und erweitert Methoden des Systems Engineerings, um die hohe Systemkomplexität von interaktiven Service Robotern sowie die vielfältigen Anforderungen an deren späteren Einsatz beherrschen zu können. Der Entwicklungsprozess der beiden Roboter basiert auf dem V-Model, welches einen strukturierten Entwurfsablauf unter Berücksichtigung aller Systemanforderungen erlaubt. Es zwingt ferner zur frühzeitigen Spezifikation von Prüfabläufen, was die Qualität und Zuverlässigkeit der Entwicklungsergebnisse verbessert. Für die Unterstützung von Entscheidungen im Entwicklungsprozess schlägt diese Arbeit eine Kombination aus dem V-Model und dem Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) vor. Der AHP hilft bei der Auswahl verfügbarer technischer Alternativen unter Berücksichtigung von Prioritäten im Entwicklungsprozess. Diese Arbeit spezifiziert sieben Kriterien, die Service Roboter charakterisieren: Anpassbarkeit, Laufzeit, Benutzbarkeit, Robustheit, Sicherheit, Features und Kosten. Die Prioritäten dieser Kriterien im Entwicklungsprozess werden für jeden Roboter individuell bestimmt. Der AHP ermittelt die beste Lösung basierend auf diesen gewichteten Kriterien und den bewerteten technischen Alternativen. Die Einbindung des AHP in den V-Model Prozess wurde am Entwurf des Shopping Roboter entwickelt und geprüft. Die Allgemeingültigkeit dieser Methode wurde während der Entwicklung des Pflegeroboters verifiziert.Interactive service robots have already been developed and operate as example installations taking over guidance tasks or serving as home assistants. However, none of these systems have become an off-the-shelf product or have achieved the predicted breakthrough so far. The challenges of the design of such systems are, on the one hand, the combination of cutting edge technologies to a complex product; on the other hand, the consideration of requirements important for the later marketing during the design process. In the framework of this dissertation, two interactive service robot systems are developed that have the potential to overcome current market entry barriers. These robots are designed to operate in two different environments: one robot guides walked-in users in large home improvement stores to requested product locations and interacts with the customer to provide product information; the other robot assists elderly people to stay longer in their homes and takes over home-care tasks. This work describes the realization of the embedded systems of both robots. In particular, the design of low-level system architectures, energy management systems, communication systems, sensor systems, and selected aspects of mechanical implementations are carried out in this work. Multiple embedded system modules are developed for the control of the robots' functionalities; the development processes as well as the composition and evaluation of these modules are presented in this work. To cope with the complexity and the various factors that are important for the design of the robots, this thesis applies and further develops system engineering methods. The development process is based on the V-Model system design method. The V-Model helps to structure the design process under consideration of all system requirements. It involves evaluation procedures at all design levels, and thus increases the quality and reliability of the development outputs. To support design decisions, this thesis proposes to combine the V-Model with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. The AHP helps to evaluate technical alternatives for design decisions according to overall criteria, a system has to fulfill. This thesis defines seven criteria that characterize a service robot: Adaptability, Operation Time, Usability, Robustness, Safeness, Features, and Costs. These criteria are weighted for each individual robot application. The AHP evaluates technical design alternatives based on the weighted criteria to reveal the best technical solution. The integration of the AHP into the V-Model development is tested and improved during the design process of the shopping robot system. The generality of this combined systematic design approach is validated during the design of the home-care robot system

Space Time Exploration of Musical Instruments

Musical instruments are tools used to generate sounds for musical expression. Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) musical instruments create sounds that may be spatially disjointed from the instrument controls. Spatial audio processing can be used to position the Extended Reality (XR) musical instruments and their corresponding sounds in the same space. This dissertation investigates novel ways of combining spatial reverb models to improve the naturalness of XR musical instruments. Seven spatial reverb systems, combinations of a shoebox spatial reverb model, a raytracing spatial reverb model, and measured directional room impulse response convolution reverb, were compared in a pilot study. A novel hybrid system of synthetic early reflections and directional room impulse responses was preferred for naturalness when tested over headphones with three instruments created by the author: AR electric guitar, AR drumset, and VR Singing Kite. This research culminated in a concert, Spherical Sound Search, which showcased the preferred hybrid system, the three XR musical instruments, and four re-contextualized spatial audio effects (spatial looping, spatial delay, spatial feedback, and spatial compression). The three pieces in the concert explored different aspects of XR modalities and presented the novel system with spatial audio effects to a larger audience by rendering to an octophonic loudspeaker layout

Optimizing Natural Walking Usage in VR using Redirected Teleportation

Virtual Reality (VR) has come a long way since its inception and with the recent advancements in technology, high end VR headsets are now commercially available. Although these headsets offer full motion tracking capabilities, locomotion in VR is yet to be fully solved due to space constraints, potential VR sickness and problems with retaining immersion. Teleportation is the most popular locomotion technique in VR as it allows users to safely navigate beyond the confines of the available positional tracking space without inducing VR sickness. It has been argued that the use of teleportation doesn’t facilitate the use of natural walking input which is considered to have a higher presence because teleportation is faster, requires little physical effort and uses limited available tracking space. When a user walks to the edge of the tracking space, he/she must switch to teleportation. When navigating in the same direction, available walking space does not increase, which forces users to remain stationary and continue using teleportation. We present redirected teleportation, a novel locomotion method that increases tracking space usage and natural walking input by subtle reorientation and repositioning of the user. We first analyzed the positional tendencies of the users as they played popular games implementing teleportation and found the utilization of the tracking space to be limited. We then compared redirected teleportation with regular teleportation using a navigation task in three different environments. Analysis of our data show that although redirected walking takes more time, users used significantly fewer teleports and more natural walking input while using more of the available tracking space. The increase in time is largely due to users walking more, which takes more time than using teleportation. Our results provide evidence that redirected teleportation may be a viable approach to increase the usage of natural walking input while decreasing the dependency on teleportation

Spatially Aware Computing for Natural Interaction

Spatial information refers to the location of an object in a physical or digital world. Besides, it also includes the relative position of an object related to other objects around it. In this dissertation, three systems are designed and developed. All of them apply spatial information in different fields. The ultimate goal is to increase the user friendliness and efficiency in those applications by utilizing spatial information. The first system is a novel Web page data extraction application, which takes advantage of 2D spatial information to discover structured records from a Web page. The extracted information is useful to re-organize the layout of a Web page to fit mobile browsing. The second application utilizes the 3D spatial information of a mobile device within a large paper-based workspace to implement interactive paper that combines the merits of paper documents and mobile devices. This application can overlay digital information on top of a paper document based on the location of a mobile device within a workspace. The third application further integrates 3D space information with sound detection to realize an automatic camera management system. This application automatically controls multiple cameras in a conference room, and creates an engaging video by intelligently switching camera shots among meeting participants based on their activities. Evaluations have been made on all three applications, and the results are promising. In summary, this dissertation comprehensively explores the usage of spatial information in various applications to improve the usability

Mission Information and Test Systems Summary of Accomplishments, 2012-2013

This annual report covers the activities of the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center's Mission Information and Test Systems directorate, which include the Western Aeronautical Test Range (Range Engineering and Range Operations), the Simulation Engineering Branch, and Information Services. This report contains highlights, current projects, and various awards achieved throughout 2012 and 2013

Virtual reality tools in developing industrial training for additive manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (commonly known as 3D-printing) is experiencing increasing global popularity in the manufacturing industry. The technology has been adopted by large companies and additive manufacturing services have been outsourced by smaller ones, but first-party adoption of the technology among small and medium-sized enterprises has been slow. Additive manufacturing provides new opportunities for manufacturing but also requires specialized expertise among users of the technology. Studies indicate that modern digital learning techniques such as micro learning and the use of virtual reality and 360° video can provide effective means of learning industrial skills. The purpose of this thesis was to examine digital learning techniques, 360° video and virtual reality as well as various additive manufacturing technologies in order to produce a virtual reality -based learning application for industrial training of additive manufacturing. It was also necessary to test and validate the effectiveness of the training application and derive future considerations for more advanced iterations. The value of stereoscopic 360° virtual reality video was also examined. The first version of the training application was successfully completed, and user tests were conducted. A mix of quantitative feedback in the form of a survey, and qualitative feedback in the form of interviews, was gathered from a number of test users. Feedback was overall positive, but some user interface issues, and technical shortcomings were highlighted. Qualitative feedback regarding stereoscopic 360° video indicated the technique to have additional value for learning purposes in virtual reality. The results of these tests will be taken into consideration in the design of a second version of the training application. Topics for further studies were also proposed