Modeling of micro-scale touch sensations for use with haptically augmented reality

Possessing dexterity and sensory perceptions, the human hand is a versatile tool that can grasp, hold, and manipulate objects using various postures and forces interacting with the environment. Many industrial tasks are replacing human hands with anthropomorphic robotic hands. In skillful tasks such as micro surgical operations, a master-slave interface system of robotic hands is required to emulate a human hand\u27s dexterity by using glove controllers with force sensors for telemanipulation. Although these interface techniques are widely applied for large scale robots, little has been accomplished for micro-scale robots due to the constraints and complexity imposed by miniaturization. To provide sensible haptic control and feedback from robots at the micro-level, this work investigates the intricacies associated with the use of micro-scale robotic actuators with the intention of using them with haptic feedback systems. This work also develops a system model to test the ability of computing elements that emulate a microrobotic hand\u27s tactile perception of stiffness. An interface glove was used to collect control data from the user, which was used alongside a Matlab model to simulate the operation and control of two different microhand designs. In order to control the microhand device accurately, feedback from simulated sensors was used to affect the airflow of the pneumatic system driving the displacement of the microhand. Four major components were developed for the overall system. The glove interface gives the operator a method to interact with the system. The microhand modeling took place in two components. The first component was the model of the microhand itself. The other component needed was a pneumatic subsystem to drive the microhand operation. The final major component developed was a graphical user interface to give the operator feedback as to what is happening in the target environment. The integration of all of these components allows for experimentation of the intricacies of operating with these microhand devices. The investigation of this micro-haptic system shows that some parameters make the system perform faster and more accurately than others. Metrics such as percent error and settling time of the displacement of one micro-finger are shown to measure success of each method. Future improvements for this system could include the integration of pneumatically controlled balloon micro-actuators with the operator\u27s glove interface or implementing more accurate contact mechanics into the model

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Digital geographies of public art: New global politics

Responding to geography’s digital and political turns, this article presents an original critical synthesis of the under-examined niche of networked geographies of public-art practices in today’s politicised digital culture. This article advances insights into digital public art as politics, and its role in politicising online public spaces with foci on: how digital technologies have instigated do-it-yourself modes for the co-creation of art content within peer-to-peer contexts; the way art is ‘stretched’ and experienced in/across the digital public sphere; and how user-(co-)created content has become subject to (mis)uses, simultaneously informed by digital ‘artivism’ and a new global politics infused with populism

History of Computer Art

A large text presents the history of Computer Art. The history of the artistic uses of computers and computing processes is reconstructed from its beginnings in the fifties to its present state. It points out hypertextual, modular and generative modes to use computing processes in Computer Art and features examples of early developments in media like cybernetic sculptures, video tools, computer graphics and animation (including music videos and demos), video and computer games, pervasive games, reactive installations, virtual reality, evolutionary art and net art. The functions of relevant art works are explained more detailed than is usual in such histories. From October 2011 to December 2012 the chapters have been published successively in German (The English translation started in August 2013 and was completed in June 2014)

Universal Communication model and evaluation with the Elderly Society

Telecommunication uses today various devices, operating systems, network technologies and applications. The multiplicity and diversity of these items are expected to increase due to the development of new technologies. As a result communication becomes a challenge. Communication is according to the World Health Organization a basic requirement for participation of elderly people in the society. In this thesis the architecture model ¿Universal Communication Model¿ (UCM) for the unified application of these items is developed and investigated. The future society will merely be 60+ and lowered physical abilities for communication need to be compensated. Two hypotheses that represent challenges of the UCM are provided and investigated: First, ¿Elderlies have difficulties in stress and ad-hoc situations to cope with ICT solutions¿ (H 1), and second ¿Elderlies have problems to reach destinations¿ (H 2). Both hypotheses are divided into sub-hypotheses without and with UCM support. Two use cases are applied to the UCM: Elderly father at home called by his daughter from her car, and disoriented grandma walking to her appointment at the medical clinic using the public transportation system. The two use cases are detailed with scenarios and corresponding prototypes. 24 tasks for elderly probands are developed and executed in a laboratory setting with 30 elderlies (including a questionnaire): Half of the tasks, namely twelve, are designed without the UCM and the other half with the application of the UCM. The time measurements to solve the tasks are evaluated using two statistical methods: The Euclidean distance and the Kullback-Leibler divergence of the measured data distributions and the corresponding Gaussian distributions are computed. The experiments demonstrate that the task execution durations were reduced by a factor of up to six due to the application of the UCM (compared to the situation without UCM). And the (qualitative) satisfaction factor of the probands increased by a factor of up to four for all tasks due to the seamless and multimodal UCM. These results show that the UCM supports communication for the elderly society in a seamless and intuitive way.Ingeniería, Industria y Construcció