Soft set theory based decision support system for mining electronic government dataset

Electronic government (e-gov) is applied to support performance and create more efficient and effective public services. Grouping data in soft-set theory can be considered as a decision-making technique for determining the maturity level of e-government use. So far, the uncertainty of the data obtained through the questionnaire has not been maximally used as an appropriate reference for the government in determining the direction of future e-gov development policy. This study presents the maximum attribute relative (MAR) based on soft set theory to classify attribute options. The results show that facilitation conditions (FC) are the highest variable in influencing people to use e-government, followed by performance expectancy (PE) and system quality (SQ). The results provide useful information for decision makers to make policies about their citizens and potentially provide recommendations on how to design and develop e-government systems in improving public services

Real-time rendering and simulation of trees and snow

Tree models created by an industry used package are exported and the structure extracted in order to procedurally regenerate the geometric mesh, addressing the limitations of the application's standard output. The structure, once extracted, is used to fully generate a high quality skeleton for the tree, individually representing each section in every branch to give the greatest achievable level of freedom of deformation and animation. Around the generated skeleton, a new geometric mesh is wrapped using a single, continuous surface resulting in the removal of intersection based render artefacts. Surface smoothing and enhanced detail is added to the model dynamically using the GPU enhanced tessellation engine. A real-time snow accumulation system is developed to generate snow cover on a dynamic, animated scene. Occlusion techniques are used to project snow accumulating faces and map exposed areas to applied accumulation maps in the form of dynamic textures. Accumulation maps are xed to applied surfaces, allowing moving objects to maintain accumulated snow cover. Mesh generation is performed dynamically during the rendering pass using surface o�setting and tessellation to enhance required detail

Simulation levels of detail for plant motion

In this paper we describe a method for simulating motion of realistically complex plants interactively. We use a precomputation stage to generate the plant structure, along with a set of simulation levels of detail. The levels of detail are made by continuously grouping branches starting from the tips of the branches and working toward the trunk. Grouped branches are simulated as single branches that have similar simulation characteristics to the original branches. During run-time, we traverse the plant and determine the allowable error in the simulation of branch motion. This allows us to choose the appropriate simulation level of detail and we provide smooth transitions from level to level. Our level of detail approach affects only the simulation parameters, allowing geometry to be handled independently. Using this method we can significantly improve simulation times for complex trees

Gazebo Plants: Simulating Plant-Robot Interaction with Cosserat Rods

Robotic harvesting has the potential to positively impact agricultural productivity, reduce costs, improve food quality, enhance sustainability, and to address labor shortage. In the rapidly advancing field of agricultural robotics, the necessity of training robots in a virtual environment has become essential. Generating training data to automatize the underlying computer vision tasks such as image segmentation, object detection and classification, also heavily relies on such virtual environments as synthetic data is often required to overcome the shortage and lack of variety of real data sets. However, physics engines commonly employed within the robotics community, such as ODE, Simbody, Bullet, and DART, primarily support motion and collision interaction of rigid bodies. This inherent limitation hinders experimentation and progress in handling non-rigid objects such as plants and crops. In this contribution, we present a plugin for the Gazebo simulation platform based on Cosserat rods to model plant motion. It enables the simulation of plants and their interaction with the environment. We demonstrate that, using our plugin, users can conduct harvesting simulations in Gazebo by simulating a robotic arm picking fruits and achieve results comparable to real-world experiments.Comment: Upon request, we are happy to share our GazeboPlants plugin open-source (MPL 2.0

High-quality tree structures modelling using local convolution surface approximation

In this paper, we propose a local convolution surface approximation approach for quickly modelling tree structures with pleasing visual effect. Using our proposed local convolution surface approximation, we present a tree modelling scheme to create the structure of a tree with a single high-quality quad-only mesh. Through combining the strengths of the convolution surfaces, subdivision surfaces and GPU, our tree modelling approach achieves high efficiency and good mesh quality. With our method, we first extract the line skeletons of given tree models by contracting the meshes with the Laplace operator. Then we approximate the original tree mesh with a convolution surface based on the extracted skeletons. Next, we tessellate the tree trunks represented by convolution surfaces into quad-only subdivision surfaces with good edge flow along the skeletal directions. We implement the most time-consuming subdivision and convolution approximation on the GPU with CUDA, and demonstrate applications of our proposed approach in branch editing and tree composition

A digital botanical garden: using interactive 3D models for visitor experience enhancement and collection management

Highlights: • A virtual 3D model of a botanical garden was built based on a GIS with plants botanical information and buildings, statues and other assets historical information. • The height and crown diameter of individual trees were determined from watershed operations on aerial LiDAR data. Statues were modelled photogrammetrically. Buildings were modelled procedurally using CGA rules. • Users found realism and information access to be the most positive points. The way of data organisation and the elaborated modelling rules make the product easily extendable for new data and objects. Abstract: Botanical gardens are important spots in urban spaces, both for researchers and for many different kinds of public. Conveying scientific information by means of an attractive digital product, on a pre- or post-visit experience, is a way of captivating the public, especially the younger generation, to the relevance of those gardens as repositories of knowledge and for conservation of plant species diversity. This approach also facilitates communication with the general public and access to historical data. On the other hand, bringing the garden to the desktop of researchers and managers can be an advantage, not only for an overview of the status quo but also in spatial planning matters. This paper describes the production of a 3D dynamic model of the Tropical Botanical Garden in Lisbon on top of a Geographic Information System (GIS). Its development included creating a spatial database to organise data originating from a variety of sources, the three-dimensional (3D) modelling of plants, buildings and statues, the creation of web pages with historic and contextual information, as well as the publication of a number of interactive 3D scenes. Several software packages were used, and the final outputs were published in ArcGIS Online to be explored by the public and researchers (link provided at the end of the text). The data are organised in a database, and most 3D modelling tasks are procedural through Computer Generated Architecture (CGA) rules. Thus, updating information or 3D models can be done without having to repeat all steps, an important feature for a dynamic botanical garden. Challenges and solutions are also addressed, providing a constructive contribution to the further implementation of similar experiences in other botanical gardens. According to a user survey carried out, the realism of the representation and the possibility of easily retrieving information from the objects are the most positive aspects of the project