Speech-driven Animation with Meaningful Behaviors

Conversational agents (CAs) play an important role in human computer interaction. Creating believable movements for CAs is challenging, since the movements have to be meaningful and natural, reflecting the coupling between gestures and speech. Studies in the past have mainly relied on rule-based or data-driven approaches. Rule-based methods focus on creating meaningful behaviors conveying the underlying message, but the gestures cannot be easily synchronized with speech. Data-driven approaches, especially speech-driven models, can capture the relationship between speech and gestures. However, they create behaviors disregarding the meaning of the message. This study proposes to bridge the gap between these two approaches overcoming their limitations. The approach builds a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN), where a discrete variable is added to constrain the behaviors on the underlying constraint. The study implements and evaluates the approach with two constraints: discourse functions and prototypical behaviors. By constraining on the discourse functions (e.g., questions), the model learns the characteristic behaviors associated with a given discourse class learning the rules from the data. By constraining on prototypical behaviors (e.g., head nods), the approach can be embedded in a rule-based system as a behavior realizer creating trajectories that are timely synchronized with speech. The study proposes a DBN structure and a training approach that (1) models the cause-effect relationship between the constraint and the gestures, (2) initializes the state configuration models increasing the range of the generated behaviors, and (3) captures the differences in the behaviors across constraints by enforcing sparse transitions between shared and exclusive states per constraint. Objective and subjective evaluations demonstrate the benefits of the proposed approach over an unconstrained model.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, 5 table

“You, Move There!”: Investigating the Impact of Feedback on Voice Control in Virtual Environments

Current virtual environment (VEs) input techniques often overlook speech as a useful control modality. Speech could improve interaction in multimodal VEs by enabling users to address objects, locations, and agents, yet research on how to design effective speech for VEs is limited. Our paper investigates the effect of agent feedback on speech VE experiences. Through a lab study, users commanded agents to navigate a VE, receiving either auditory, visual or behavioural feedback. Based on a post interaction semi-structured interview, we find that the type of feedback given by agents is critical to user experience. Specifically auditory mechanisms are preferred, allowing users to engage with other modalities seamlessly during interaction. Although command-like utterances were frequently used, it was perceived as contextually appropriate, ensuring users were understood. Many also found it difficult to discover speech-based functionality. Drawing on these, we discuss key challenges for designing speech input for VEs

Conceptual design framework for information visualization to support multidimensional datasets in higher education institutions

Information Visualization (InfoVis) enjoys diverse adoption and applicability because of its strength in solving the problem of information overload inherent in institutional data. Policy and decision makers of higher education institutions (HEIs) are also experiencing information overload while interacting with students‟ data, because of its multidimensionality. This constraints decision making processes, and therefore requires a domain-specific InfoVis conceptual design framework which will birth the domain‟s InfoVis tool. This study therefore aims to design HEI Students‟ data-focused InfoVis (HSDI) conceptual design framework which addresses the content delivery techniques and the systematic processes in actualizing the domain specific InfoVis. The study involved four phases: 1) a users‟ study to investigate, elicit and prioritize the students‟ data-related explicit knowledge preferences of HEI domain policy. The corresponding students‟ data dimensions are then categorised, 2) exploratory study through content analysis of InfoVis design literatures, and subsequent mapping with findings from the users‟ study, to propose the appropriate visualization, interaction and distortion techniques for delivering the domain‟s explicit knowledge preferences, 3) conceptual development of the design framework which integrates the techniques‟ model with its design process–as identified from adaptation of software engineering and InfoVis design models, 4) evaluation of the proposed framework through expert review, prototyping, heuristics evaluation, and users‟ experience evaluation. For an InfoVis that will appropriately present and represent the domain explicit knowledge preferences, support the students‟ data multidimensionality and the decision making processes, the study found that: 1) mouse-on, mouse-on-click, mouse on-drag, drop down menu, push button, check boxes, and dynamics cursor hinting are the appropriate interaction techniques, 2) zooming, overview with details, scrolling, and exploration are the appropriate distortion techniques, and 3) line chart, scatter plot, map view, bar chart and pie chart are the appropriate visualization techniques. The theoretical support to the proposed framework suggests that dictates of preattentive processing theory, cognitive-fit theory, and normative and descriptive theories must be followed for InfoVis to aid perception, cognition and decision making respectively. This study contributes to the area of InfoVis, data-driven decision making process, and HEI students‟ data usage process

A model for soap film dynamics with evolving thickness

Previous research on animations of soap bubbles, films, and foams largely focuses on the motion and geometric shape of the bubble surface. These works neglect the evolution of the bubble’s thickness, which is normally responsible for visual phenomena like surface vortices, Newton’s interference patterns, capillary waves, and deformation-dependent rupturing of films in a foam. In this paper, we model these natural phenomena by introducing the film thickness as a reduced degree of freedom in the Navier-Stokes equations and deriving their equations of motion. We discretize the equations on a nonmanifold triangle mesh surface and couple it to an existing bubble solver. In doing so, we also introduce an incompressible fluid solver for 2.5D films and a novel advection algorithm for convecting fields across non-manifold surface junctions. Our simulations enhance state-of-the-art bubble solvers with additional effects caused by convection, rippling, draining, and evaporation of the thin film

Biometric Data Art: Personalized Narratives and Multimodal Interaction

Biometric technology has brought enhancements to identification and access control. As more digital applications request people to input their biometric data as a more convenient and secure method of identification, the possibility of losing their personal data and identities may increase. The phenomenon of biometric data abuse causes one to question what their true identity may be and what methods can be used to define identity and hidden narratives. The questions of identification and the insecurity of biometric data have become my inspiration, providing artistic approaches to the manipulation of biometric data and having the potential to suggest new directions for solving the problems. To do so, in-depth investigation of the narratives beyond the visual features of the biometric data is necessary. This content can create a close link between an artwork and its audience by causing the latter to become deeply engaged with the artwork through their own stories.This dissertation examines narratives and artistic explorations discovered from one form of biometric data, fingerprints, drawing on insights from various fields such as genetics, hand analysis, and biology. It also presents contributions on new ways of creating interactive media artworks using fingerprint data based on visual feature analysis of the data and multimodal interaction to explore their sonic signatures. Therefore, the artwork enriches interactive media art by incorporating personalization into the artistic experience, and creates unique personalized experience for each audience member. This thesis documents developments and productions of a series of artworks, Digiti Sonus, by focusing on its conceptual approaches, design, techniques, challenges and future directions

Enhancing Mesh Deformation Realism: Dynamic Mesostructure Detailing and Procedural Microstructure Synthesis

Propomos uma solução para gerar dados de mapas de relevo dinâmicos para simular deformações em superfícies macias, com foco na pele humana. A solução incorpora a simulação de rugas ao nível mesoestrutural e utiliza texturas procedurais para adicionar detalhes de microestrutura estáticos. Oferece flexibilidade além da pele humana, permitindo a geração de padrões que imitam deformações em outros materiais macios, como couro, durante a animação. As soluções existentes para simular rugas e pistas de deformação frequentemente dependem de hardware especializado, que é dispendioso e de difícil acesso. Além disso, depender exclusivamente de dados capturados limita a direção artística e dificulta a adaptação a mudanças. Em contraste, a solução proposta permite a síntese dinâmica de texturas que se adaptam às deformações subjacentes da malha de forma fisicamente plausível. Vários métodos foram explorados para sintetizar rugas diretamente na geometria, mas sofrem de limitações como auto-interseções e maiores requisitos de armazenamento. A intervenção manual de artistas na criação de mapas de rugas e mapas de tensão permite controle, mas pode ser limitada em deformações complexas ou onde maior realismo seja necessário. O nosso trabalho destaca o potencial dos métodos procedimentais para aprimorar a geração de padrões de deformação dinâmica, incluindo rugas, com maior controle criativo e sem depender de dados capturados. A incorporação de padrões procedimentais estáticos melhora o realismo, e a abordagem pode ser estendida além da pele para outros materiais macios.We propose a solution for generating dynamic heightmap data to simulate deformations for soft surfaces, with a focus on human skin. The solution incorporates mesostructure-level wrinkles and utilizes procedural textures to add static microstructure details. It offers flexibility beyond human skin, enabling the generation of patterns mimicking deformations in other soft materials, such as leater, during animation. Existing solutions for simulating wrinkles and deformation cues often rely on specialized hardware, which is costly and not easily accessible. Moreover, relying solely on captured data limits artistic direction and hinders adaptability to changes. In contrast, our proposed solution provides dynamic texture synthesis that adapts to underlying mesh deformations. Various methods have been explored to synthesize wrinkles directly to the geometry, but they suffer from limitations such as self-intersections and increased storage requirements. Manual intervention by artists using wrinkle maps and tension maps provides control but may be limited to the physics-based simulations. Our research presents the potential of procedural methods to enhance the generation of dynamic deformation patterns, including wrinkles, with greater creative control and without reliance on captured data. Incorporating static procedural patterns improves realism, and the approach can be extended to other soft-materials beyond skin

Dynamic task scheduling and binding for many-core systems through stream rewriting

This thesis proposes a novel model of computation, called stream rewriting, for the specification and implementation of highly concurrent applications. Basically, the active tasks of an application and their dependencies are encoded as a token stream, which is iteratively modified by a set of rewriting rules at runtime. In order to estimate the performance and scalability of stream rewriting, a large number of experiments have been evaluated on many-core systems and the task management has been implemented in software and hardware.In dieser Dissertation wurde Stream Rewriting als eine neue Methode entwickelt, um Anwendungen mit einer großen Anzahl von dynamischen Tasks zu beschreiben und effizient zur Laufzeit verwalten zu können. Dabei werden die aktiven Tasks in einem Datenstrom verpackt, der zur Laufzeit durch wiederholtes Suchen und Ersetzen umgeschrieben wird. Um die Performance und Skalierbarkeit zu bestimmen, wurde eine Vielzahl von Experimenten mit Many-Core-Systemen durchgeführt und die Verwaltung von Tasks über Stream Rewriting in Software und Hardware implementiert

Augmented Reality Markerless Multi-Image Outdoor Tracking System for the Historical Buildings on Parliament Hill

[EN] Augmented Reality (AR) applications have experienced extraordinary growth recently, evolving into a well-established method for the dissemination and communication of content related to cultural heritage¿including education. AR applications have been used in museums and gallery exhibitions and virtual reconstructions of historic interiors. However, the circumstances of an outdoor environment can be problematic. This paper presents a methodology to develop immersive AR applications based on the recognition of outdoor buildings. To demonstrate this methodology, a case study focused on the Parliament Buildings National Historic Site in Ottawa, Canada has been conducted. The site is currently undergoing a multiyear rehabilitation program that will make access to parts of this national monument inaccessible to the public. AR experiences, including simulated photo merging of historic and present content, are proposed as one tool that can enrich the Parliament Hill visit during the rehabilitation. Outdoor AR experiences are limited by factors, such as variable lighting (and shadows) conditions, caused by changes in the environment (objects height and orientation, obstructions, occlusions), the weather, and the time of day. This paper proposes a workflow to solve some of these issues from a multi-image tracking approach.This work has been developed under the framework of the New Paradigms/New Tools for Heritage Conservation in Canada, a project funded through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).Blanco-Pons, S.; Carrión-Ruiz, B.; Duong, M.; Chartrand, J.; Fai, S.; Lerma, JL. (2019). Augmented Reality Markerless Multi-Image Outdoor Tracking System for the Historical Buildings on Parliament Hill. Sustainability. 11(16):1-15. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11164268S1151116Bekele, M. K., Pierdicca, R., Frontoni, E., Malinverni, E. S., & Gain, J. (2018). A Survey of Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality for Cultural Heritage. Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 11(2), 1-36. doi:10.1145/3145534Gimeno, J., Portalés, C., Coma, I., Fernández, M., & Martínez, B. (2017). Combining traditional and indirect augmented reality for indoor crowded environments. A case study on the Casa Batlló museum. Computers & Graphics, 69, 92-103. doi:10.1016/j.cag.2017.09.001Kolivand, H., El Rhalibi, A., Shahrizal Sunar, M., & Saba, T. (2018). ReVitAge: Realistic virtual heritage taking shadows and sky illumination into account. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 32, 166-175. doi:10.1016/j.culher.2018.01.020Amakawa, J., & Westin, J. (2017). New Philadelphia: using augmented reality to interpret slavery and reconstruction era historical sites. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24(3), 315-331. doi:10.1080/13527258.2017.1378909Kim, J.-B., & Park, C. (2011). Development of Mobile AR Tour Application for the National Palace Museum of Korea. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 55-60. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-22021-0_7Barrile, V., Fotia, A., Bilotta, G., & De Carlo, D. (2019). Integration of geomatics methodologies and creation of a cultural heritage app using augmented reality. Virtual Archaeology Review, 10(20), 40. doi:10.4995/var.2019.10361Analysis of Tracking Accuracy for Single-Camera Square-Marker-Based Tracking. In Third Workshop on Virtual and Augmented Reality of the GI-Fachgruppe VR/AR, Koblenz, Germany, 2006http://campar.in.tum.de/Chair/PublicationDetail?pub=pentenrieder2006giCirulis, A., & Brigmanis, K. B. (2013). 3D Outdoor Augmented Reality for Architecture and Urban Planning. Procedia Computer Science, 25, 71-79. doi:10.1016/j.procs.2013.11.009You, S., Neumann, U., & Azuma, R. (1999). Orientation tracking for outdoor augmented reality registration. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 19(6), 36-42. doi:10.1109/38.799738Wither, J., Tsai, Y.-T., & Azuma, R. (2011). Indirect augmented reality. Computers & Graphics, 35(4), 810-822. doi:10.1016/j.cag.2011.04.010Radkowski, R., & Oliver, J. (2013). Natural Feature Tracking Augmented Reality for On-Site Assembly Assistance Systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 281-290. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-39420-1_30Rao, J., Qiao, Y., Ren, F., Wang, J., & Du, Q. (2017). A Mobile Outdoor Augmented Reality Method Combining Deep Learning Object Detection and Spatial Relationships for Geovisualization. Sensors, 17(9), 1951. doi:10.3390/s17091951Hoppe, H., DeRose, T., Duchamp, T., McDonald, J., & Stuetzle, W. (1993). Mesh optimization. Proceedings of the 20th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques - SIGGRAPH ’93. doi:10.1145/166117.166119Rossignac, J., & Borrel, P. (1993). Multi-resolution 3D approximations for rendering complex scenes. Modeling in Computer Graphics, 455-465. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-78114-8_29Gross, M. H., Staadt, O. G., & Gatti, R. (1996). Efficient triangular surface approximations using wavelets and quadtree data structures. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2(2), 130-143. doi:10.1109/2945.506225Botsch, M., Pauly, M., Rossl, C., Bischoff, S., & Kobbelt, L. (2006). Geometric modeling based on triangle meshes. ACM SIGGRAPH 2006 Courses on - SIGGRAPH ’06. doi:10.1145/1185657.1185839Pietroni, N., Tarini, M., & Cignoni, P. (2010). Almost Isometric Mesh Parameterization through Abstract Domains. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 16(4), 621-635. doi:10.1109/tvcg.2009.96Khan, D., Yan, D.-M., Ding, F., Zhuang, Y., & Zhang, X. (2018). Surface remeshing with robust user-guided segmentation. Computational Visual Media, 4(2), 113-122. doi:10.1007/s41095-018-0107-yGuidi, G., Russo, M., Ercoli, S., Remondino, F., Rizzi, A., & Menna, F. (2009). A Multi-Resolution Methodology for the 3D Modeling of Large and Complex Archeological Areas. International Journal of Architectural Computing, 7(1), 39-55. doi:10.1260/147807709788549439Remondino, F., & El-Hakim, S. (2006). Image-based 3D Modelling: A Review. The Photogrammetric Record, 21(115), 269-291. doi:10.1111/j.1477-9730.2006.00383.xBruno, F., Bruno, S., De Sensi, G., Luchi, M.-L., Mancuso, S., & Muzzupappa, M. (2010). From 3D reconstruction to virtual reality: A complete methodology for digital archaeological exhibition. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 11(1), 42-49. doi:10.1016/j.culher.2009.02.006Unity, The Photogrammetry Workflowhttps://unity.com/solutions/photogrammetry.Blanco, S., Carrión, B., & Lerma, J. L. (2016). REVIEW OF AUGMENTED REALITY AND VIRTUAL REALITY TECHNIQUES IN ROCK ART. Proceedings of the ARQUEOLÓGICA 2.0 8th International Congress on Archaeology, Computer Graphics, Cultural Heritage and Innovation. doi:10.4995/arqueologica8.2016.3561Behzadan, A. H., & Kamat, V. R. (2010). Scalable Algorithm for Resolving Incorrect Occlusion in Dynamic Augmented Reality Engineering Environments. Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, 25(1), 3-19. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8667.2009.00601.xTian, Y., Long, Y., Xia, D., Yao, H., & Zhang, J. (2015). Handling occlusions in augmented reality based on 3D reconstruction method. Neurocomputing, 156, 96-104. doi:10.1016/j.neucom.2014.12.081Tian, Y., Guan, T., & Wang, C. (2010). Real-Time Occlusion Handling in Augmented Reality Based on an Object Tracking Approach. Sensors, 10(4), 2885-2900. doi:10.3390/s10040288