Modeling and Simulation in Engineering

This book provides an open platform to establish and share knowledge developed by scholars, scientists, and engineers from all over the world, about various applications of the modeling and simulation in the design process of products, in various engineering fields. The book consists of 12 chapters arranged in two sections (3D Modeling and Virtual Prototyping), reflecting the multidimensionality of applications related to modeling and simulation. Some of the most recent modeling and simulation techniques, as well as some of the most accurate and sophisticated software in treating complex systems, are applied. All the original contributions in this book are jointed by the basic principle of a successful modeling and simulation process: as complex as necessary, and as simple as possible. The idea is to manipulate the simplifying assumptions in a way that reduces the complexity of the model (in order to make a real-time simulation), but without altering the precision of the results

Customizing Experiences for Mobile Virtual Reality

A criação manual de conteúdo para um jogo é um processo demorado e trabalhoso que requer um conjunto de habilidades diversi cado (normalmente designers, artistas e programadores) e a gestão de diferentes recursos (hardware e software especializados). Dado que o orçamento, tempo e recursos são frequentemente muito limitados, os projetos poderiam bene ciar de uma solução que permitisse poupar e investir noutros aspectos do desenvolvimento. No contexto desta tese, abordamos este desa o sugerindo a criação de pacotes especí cos para a geração de conteúdo per sonalizável, focados em aplicações de Realidade Virtual (RV) móveis. Esta abordagem divide o problema numa solução com duas facetas: em primeiro lugar, a Geração Procedural de Conteúdo, alcançada através de métodos convencionais e pela utilização inovadora de Grandes Modelos de Lin guagem (normalmente conhecidos por Large Language Models). Em segundo lugar, a Co-Criação de Conteúdo, que enfatiza o desenvolvimento colaborativo de conteúdo. Adicionalmente, dado que este trabalho se foca na compatibilidade com RV móvel, as limitações de hardware associadas a capacetes de RV autónomos (standalone VR Headsets) e formas de as ultrapassar são também abordadas. O conteúdo será gerado utilizando métodos actuais em geração procedural e facilitando a co-criação de conteúdo pelo utilizador. A utilização de ambas estas abordagens resulta em ambi entes, objectivos e conteúdo geral mais re-jogáveis com muito menos desenho. Esta abordagem está actualmente a ser aplicada no desenvolvimento de duas aplicações de RV distintas. A primeira, AViR, destina-se a oferecer apoio psicológico a indivíduos após a perda de uma gravidez. A se gunda, EmotionalVRSystem, visa medir as variações nas respostas emocionais dos participantes induzidas por alterações no ambiente, utilizando tecnologia EEG para leituras precisas

Preparing for Future Forest Fires: Emerging Technologies and Innovations

Forest fires are part of the global ecosystems occurring for a long time in earth history.  These forest fires are part of the processes which establish the ecosystems and directly influence plant species composition within the ecosystems. However, the anthropogenic effect has changed this relationship causing an increasing number of forest fires Human activities have also changed world climate and future climate is expected to increase in temperature with dire consequences on the earth environment. These changes will profoundly impact on the earth’s socio-economic and human well-being. One of the effects of higher global temperature is increasing forest fires occurrences with stronger intensities.  There is a need to develop innovation and new technologies to manage these future fires. This paper aims to review various innovations and new technologies that can be used for the whole spectrum of forest fire management, from forest fire prediction to forest restoration of burnt areas. Emerging technologies such as geospatial technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, 5G & enhanced connectivity, the Internet of Behaviors (IoB), virtual and augmented reality, and robotics are discussed and potential applications to forest fire management are discussed. Adaptation of these technologies is vital in the effective management of future forest fires. Key words: Climate Change, Future Fires, InnovationsKebakaran hutan merupakan bagian dari ekosistem global yang terjadi sejak lama dalam sejarah bumi. Kebakaran hutan ini merupakan bagian dari proses yang membentuk ekosistem dan secara langsung mempengaruhi komposisi spesies tumbuhan di dalam ekosistem. Namun, efek antropogenik telah mengubah hubungan ini yang menyebabkan peningkatan jumlah kebakaran hutan Aktivitas manusia juga telah mengubah iklim dunia dan iklim di masa depan diperkirakan akan meningkatkan suhu dengan konsekuensi yang mengerikan pada lingkungan bumi. Perubahan ini akan sangat berdampak pada sosial ekonomi bumi dan kesejahteraan manusia. Salah satu dampak dari peningkatan suhu global adalah meningkatnya kejadian kebakaran hutan dengan intensitas yang lebih kuat. Ada kebutuhan untuk mengembangkan inovasi dan teknologi baru untuk mengelola kebakaran di masa depan ini. Tulisan ini bertujuan untuk mengkaji berbagai inovasi dan teknologi baru yang dapat digunakan untuk seluruh spektrum penanggulangan kebakaran hutan, mulai dari prediksi kebakaran hutan hingga restorasi hutan pada kawasan yang terbakar. Teknologi yang muncul seperti teknologi geospasial, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, 5G & konektivitas yang ditingkatkan, Internet of Behaviors (IoB), virtual dan augmented reality, dan robotika dibahas dan aplikasi potensial untuk manajemen kebakaran hutan dibahas. Adaptasi teknologi ini sangat penting dalam pengelolaan kebakaran hutan yang efektif di masa depan. Kata kunci: Perubahan Iklim, Kebakaran di Masa Depan, Inovas

Engaging the Virtual Landscape: Toward an Experiential Approach to Exploring Place Through a Spatial Experience Engine

The utilization of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and other geospatial technologies in historical inquiry and the humanities has led to a number of projects that are exploring digital representations of past landscapes and places as platforms for synthesizing and representing historical and geographic information. Recent advancements in geovisualization, immersive environments, and virtual reality offer the opportunity to generate digital representations of cultural and physical landscapes, and embed those virtual landscapes with information and knowledge from multiple GIS sources. The development of these technologies and their application to historical research has opened up new opportunities to synthesize historical records from disparate sources, represent these sources spatially in digital form, and to embed the qualitative data into those spatial representations that is often crucial to historical interpretation.;This dissertation explores the design and development of a serious game-based virtual engine, the Spatial Experience Engine (SEE), that provides an immersive and interactive platform for an experiential approach to exploring and understanding place. Through a case study focused on the late nineteenth-century urban landscape of Morgantown, West Virginia, the implementation of the SEE discussed in this dissertation demonstrates a compelling platform for building and exploring complex, virtual landscapes, enhanced with spatialized information and multimedia. The SEE not only provides an alternative approach for scholars exploring the spatial turn in history and a humanistic, experiential analysis of historical places, but its flexibility and extensibility also offer the potential for future implementations to explore a wide range of research questions related to the representation of geographic information within an immersive and interactive virtual landscape

Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments

The field of shared virtual environments, which also encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model

Geomatics and Virtual tourism

The most recent technological revolution, concerning web and “ICT”, not only changed individual and collective behaviors, but also allowed experiences no possible before: a real time communication, regardless of the distances; an extended access to disjointed data and sources; the shift in different realities – missing or entirely imaginary. Nowadays, we can think about a new concept of museum, much more inclusive than “objects container”: now the museum involves entire countries, entire ecosystems, entire regions. We can speak of “museum outside of the museum”, to extend museum “storytelling” to a regional scale, beyond the walls of the traditional museum. On a regional scale experiments entirely convincing have not yet been carried out, but from this point of view cultural lands can be visited as great open air museums, to find objects, artworks or signs: the whole land is a “collection” to be preserved, to be presented and to be interpreted. Thus the visit allows to elicit outstanding objects, to read into landscapes with different filters. Both the physical and virtual visit seem to be a “tour” (Minucciani and Garnero, 2013). To create a virtual tourism prototypal station, we need several and unconventional geometrical data (shared geographic databases, DTMs, digital orthoimages and angle shots, modeling with spherical cameras, ...), thematic data (related to cultural content) and no conventional input units to move and to observe how and where the observer prefers. Authors report here their experience to carry out a prototypal station, able to relate geomatics references to cultural content and to offer a whole experience, involving users also from the sensory point of view. That’s nowadays a specific purpose of new technologies applied to cultural heritage