VAST Challenge 2016: Streaming Visual Analytics

The 2016 VAST Challenge returns to the (fictional) island of Kronos to pose three Mini-Challenges. In Mini-Challenge 1, participants must design an innovative interactive visual interface that enables security investigators from the Euybia Island Resort and Conference Center to conduct real-time analysis of streaming data. In Mini-Challenge 2, the GAStech Corporation returns from the 2014 kidnapping disaster more committed than ever to tighten up operations at its new headquarters in Abila. Using data from stationary and mobile sensors of multiple types, participants must help the company to understand both operational issues as well as security issues. In Mini-Challenge 3, participants are asked to try their hand at the most complex VAST Challenge scenario to date: 2.5 days of live, streaming operational data. The VAST Challenge 2016 received 29 submissions and had participation from 72 reviewers

A Study On Representing Cultural Heritage By Virtual and Augmented Reality

Bu çalışma, sanal ve güçlendirilmiş öğrenme yoluyla kültürel mirasın eğitimi, korunması ve sanal öğrenilmesine yönelik genel bir bakış sunmaktadır. Kültürel miras üzerine yapılan çalışmaların, sanal gerçeklik sunarak sanal bir ortamı çoğaltıp, görselleştirip temsil ederek, gerçek dünyadaymış hissi yaratma sorumlulukları vardır. Bu, kültürel mirasın öğrenme açısından önemli bir konu olduğunu ve öğrenmenin, sistemi geliştirenin ne istediğine değil, kullanıcının ne istediğine bağlı olduğunu ortaya koyar. Öte yandan, sanal ve güçlendirilmiş ortamların birçoğu, geliştirenin uygun gördüğü şeyden meydana gelmiş olsa da, öğrenme ortamı sunma ve kültürün korunması amaçlarına hizmet etmeye devam eder (Orta Avrupa Üniversitesi, 2017). Bunun nedeni, sanal ve artırılmış gerçekliğin, kişilerin kültürel ortama ulaşarak öğrenme deneyimi elde etmelerine yarayacak bir araç sunduğu gelişmiş teknoloji ortamında öğrenmenin gerçekleşebilecek olmasıdır. Ayrıca, sistem kullanıcılarının tam olarak neyi öğrenmek istediklerine ilişkin ihtiyaçlarının belirlenmesi ve sanal ortamın nasıl yaratıldığının görülmesi de, söz konusu sanal ortamın öğrenme ortamı sağlama konusundaki başarısının ortaya konulmasında önemlidir. Her ne kadar teknoloji, sanal ve artırılmış gerçekliğin kullanımını kolaylaştırmış olsa da, bu sanal ortamın kullandığı gelişmiş teknolojiye tüm kullanıcıların ulaşamıyor oluşu bir sorun teşkil etmektedir. Sanal ortam kullanıcılarının sanal ortamdaki objelerle etkileşime girme isteği de, sistem geliştiricilerinin çözmeleri gereken bir başka meseledir. Bu tezimde, sanal ve artırılmış gerçeklik ortamının kültürel açıdan eğitim, öğrenme ve koruma fırsatları sunulmasında önemli bir rolü olduğunu göstermeye çalıştım

Gaming in Action

The «Gaming in Action» project, which brought the publicaion of this book, involved institutions from different countries that deal with adult education. For almost three years, the partners worked with teachers and trainers who applied innovative pedagogical scenarios of game-based learning and gamification, all oriented from a rigorous pedagogical perspective. The project's main goal was to increase the acquisition of pedagogical innovation skills in these models and incorporate them into their pedagogical practices. The project searched to highlight the need for quality pedagogical training in a new, technologically digital, era: in this, education has less to do with reproducing information passively and has more to do with the development of creativity, critical thinking, problem- solving and decision-making.Erasmus Plus "Gaming in Action – engaging adult learners with games and gamification" Project number: 2018-1-TR01-KA204-05931

Design and Implementation of an Interactive Animatronic System for Guest Response Analysis

In theme park based entertainment applications, there is a need for interactive, autonomous animatronic systems to create engaging and compelling experiences for the guests. The animatronic figures must identify the guests and recognize their status in dynamic interactions for enhanced acceptance and effectiveness as socially interactive agents, in the general framework of human-robot interactions. The design and implementation of an interactive, autonomous animatronic system in form of a tabletop dragon and the comparisons of guest responses in its passive and interactive modes are presented in this work. The dragon capabilities include a four degrees-of-freedom head, moving wings, tail, jaw, blinking eyes and sound effects. Human identification, using a depth camera (Carmine from PrimeSense), an open-source middleware (NITE from OpenNI), Java-based Processing and an Arduino microcontroller, has been implemented into the system in order to track a guest or guests, within the field of view of the camera. The details of design and construction of the dragon model, algorithm development for interactive autonomous behavior using a vision system, the experimental setup and implementation results under different conditions are presented. Guest experiences with the dragon operating in passive and interactive configurations have been compared both quantitatively and qualitatively through surveys and observations, for different age groups, from elementary school children to college students. Statistical significance of the survey results are presented along with a discussion on the scope of further work

Sensor Data Visualization in Virtual Globe

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.With the recent developments related with sensors in matters of standardization and accessibility, valuable data covering different geographical subjects have become widely available. The applications that can leverage sensor data are still under development and there is much to do in this subject in the scientific community. Data visualization tools are one of the immediately relevant needs related with sensor data. Such tools would help to increase the understanding and exploration of the data from which many other fields can get benefits. Virtual Globes are becoming increasingly popular in the society. The existence of several implementations and millions of users (scientific and no scientific) around the world are a proof of their increasing usability as a tool for representing and sharing geographical content. In this document we present a generic tool for visualizing sensor data retrieved from SOS servers over the NASA World Wind virtual globe. For this, we started by creating a classification of sensor data that helps in defining possible visualizations for the different types of sensor data. Using this classification as a basis, we have implemented a set of visualization types to ease sensor data exploration. We also included analysis capabilities by integrating the SEXTANTE library in the visualization tool. The results of the analysis can be included in the virtual globe as part of the visualizations

Assessment of the State-of-the-Art of System-Wide Safety and Assurance Technologies

Since its initiation, the System-wide Safety Assurance Technologies (SSAT) Project has been focused on developing multidisciplinary tools and techniques that are verified and validated to ensure prevention of loss of property and life in NextGen and enable proactive risk management through predictive methods. To this end, four technical challenges have been listed to help realize the goals of SSAT, namely (i) assurance of flight critical systems, (ii) discovery of precursors to safety incidents, (iii) assuring safe human-systems integration, and (iv) prognostic algorithm design for safety assurance. The objective of this report is to provide an extensive survey of SSAT-related research accomplishments by researchers within and outside NASA to get an understanding of what the state-of-the-art is for technologies enabling each of the four technical challenges. We hope that this report will serve as a good resource for anyone interested in gaining an understanding of the SSAT technical challenges, and also be useful in the future for project planning and resource allocation for related research

The datafication of the workplace

Technological changes in the workplace has a long history, but the recent onus on the generation of data as a central part of the digital economy brings about particular transformations that deserve further attention. Communications tools such as phones, email and computers are monitored in many companies, at the same time as new data sources such as social networks, shared calendars or collaborative working tools are being integrated to increase knowledge not only about the professional activities of workers but also about who they are, or what they might be likely to do in the future. In addition, chips, wearables and sensor networks are increasingly integrated within the broader trend of the Internet of Things (IoT)2 to facilitate emotional as well as physical states. The development of machine learning (ML) facilitates the automated processing of information, whilst multimedia databases are being labelled with semantic information to identify and measure activities, and natural language processing (NLP) can extract knowledge from non-structured texts, such as emails and social networking content to perform sentiment and tone analysis. In this report we provide an overview of these trends within the context of Europe, and focus particularly on tools used for hiring, employee surveillance, performance assessment and management. The overview presented here is not intended to be comprehensive, but is intended to identify key trends with concrete examples of prominent companies and tools in this space, as a way to advance further research agendas on the datafication of the workplace

The Influence of Cognitive Trust and Familiarity on Adoption and Continued Use of Smartphones: An Empirical Analysis

In the information-driven and application rich environment of smartphones, power is closer to the user than ever before and it has the potential of helping them become more effective and efficient. Smartphones have become increasingly important for companies to create strategic opportunities and competitive advantage by adding value for its stakeholders and improving efficiency. Technological advances in smartphones have led to increased mobile applications and implications for theory and practice since they create strategic opportunities and competitive advantage by adding value for customers and improving efficiency through the use of mobile technologies. Understanding the factors that influence the continuance in usage of smartphones in globally distributed teams is extremely helpful because knowledge on how to balance requirements and strategic interests effectively is extremely scarce in existing business model literature. To date, there are no published studies that have investigated the influence of cognitive trust and familiarity on smartphone continuance usage. To fill this gap in the literature, we developed our model based on the Visual Perception Theories as its theoretical foundation. Our model indicates that both familiarity with a smartphone and cognitive trust in integrity of a smartphone have a positive and significant effect on smartphone continuance usage. Also, our study shows factors that influence smartphone continuance usage through cognitive trust. These findings support the Visual Perception Theories

The Influence of Cognitive Trust and Familiarity on Adoption and Continued Use of Smartphones: An Empirical Analysis

In the information-driven and application rich environment of smartphones, power is closer to the user than ever before and it has the potential of helping them become more effective and efficient. Smartphones have become increasingly important for companies to create strategic opportunities and competitive advantage by adding value for its stakeholders and improving efficiency. Technological advances in smartphones have led to increased mobile applications and implications for theory and practice since they create strategic opportunities and competitive advantage by adding value for customers and improving efficiency through the use of mobile technologies. Understanding the factors that influence the continuance in usage of smartphones in globally distributed teams is extremely helpful because knowledge on how to balance requirements and strategic interests effectively is extremely scarce in existing business model literature. To date, there are no published studies that have investigated the influence of cognitive trust and familiarity on smartphone continuance usage. To fill this gap in the literature, we developed our model based on the Visual Perception Theories as its theoretical foundation. Our model indicates that both familiarity with a smartphone and cognitive trust in integrity of a smartphone have a positive and significant effect on smartphone continuance usage. Also, our study shows factors that influence smartphone continuance usage through cognitive trust. These findings support the Visual Perception Theories