Role of Virtual Reality in Geography and Science Fieldwork Education

Fieldwork has a long tradition in geography, and in certain sciences, notably geology, biology and environmental sciences. Fieldwork involves leaving the classroom and engaging in learning and teaching through first-hand experience of phenomena in outdoor settings. Exploration in natural habitats introduces students to the complexity and unpredictability of the real world, stimulates their curiosity, and increases their interest in scientific inquiry. However, over the last decade, there has been a decline in field-study opportunities in schools. This policy paper describes the first extensive user-centered research programme into the role of technology-enabled virtual field trips as a means for improving the effectiveness of the outdoor fieldwork experience. It draws on a year-long research project that investigated how Google Expeditions, a smartphone-driven mobile virtual reality application, bridges virtual fieldwork with physical field trips and facilitates inquiry-based fieldwork and experiential learning. It examines the role of Google Expeditions in primary and secondary school science and geography, outlining the opportunities and challenges of integrating mobile virtual reality in schools and the practical implications of our research for fieldwork education in further and higher education

Do I smell coffee? The tale of a 360º Mulsemedia experience

One of the main challenges in current multimedia networking environments is to find solutions to help accommodate the next generation of mobile application classes with stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements whilst enabling Quality of Experience (QoE) provisioning for users. One such application class, featured in this paper, is 360º mulsemedia—multiple sensorial media—which enriches 360º video by adding sensory effects that stimulate human senses beyond those of sight and hearing, such as the tactile and olfactory ones. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework for 360º mulsemedia delivery and a 360º mulsemedia-based prototype that enables users to experience 360º mulsemedia content. User evaluations revealed that higher video resolutions do not necessarily lead to the highest QoE levels in our experimental setup. Therefore, bandwidth savings can be leveraged with no detrimental impact on QoE

Potential applications for virtual and augmented reality technologies in sensory science

peer-reviewedSensory science has advanced significantly in the past decade and is quickly evolving to become a key tool for predicting food product success in the marketplace. Increasingly, sensory data techniques are moving towards more dynamic aspects of sensory perception, taking account of the various stages of user-product interactions. Recent technological advancements in virtual reality and augmented reality have unlocked the potential for new immersive and interactive systems which could be applied as powerful tools for capturing and deciphering the complexities of human sensory perception. This paper reviews recent advancements in virtual and augmented reality technologies and identifies and explores their potential application within the field of sensory science. The paper also considers the possible benefits for the food industry as well as key challenges posed for widespread adoption. The findings indicate that these technologies have the potential to alter the research landscape in sensory science by facilitating promising innovations in five principal areas: consumption context, biometrics, food structure and texture, sensory marketing and augmenting sensory perception. Although the advent of augmented and virtual reality in sensory science offers new exciting developments, the exploitation of these technologies is in its infancy and future research will understand how they can be fully integrated with food and human responses. Industrial relevance: The need for sensory evaluation within the food industry is becoming increasingly complex as companies continuously compete for consumer product acceptance in today's highly innovative and global food environment. Recent technological developments in virtual and augmented reality offer the food industry new opportunities for generating more reliable insights into consumer sensory perceptions of food and beverages, contributing to the design and development of new products with optimised consumer benefits. These technologies also hold significant potential for improving the predictive validity of newly launched products within the marketplace

Immersive interconnected virtual and augmented reality : a 5G and IoT perspective

Despite remarkable advances, current augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications are a largely individual and local experience. Interconnected AR/VR, where participants can virtually interact across vast distances, remains a distant dream. The great barrier that stands between current technology and such applications is the stringent end-to-end latency requirement, which should not exceed 20 ms in order to avoid motion sickness and other discomforts. Bringing AR/VR to the next level to enable immersive interconnected AR/VR will require significant advances towards 5G ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) and a Tactile Internet of Things (IoT). In this article, we articulate the technical challenges to enable a future AR/VR end-to-end architecture, that combines 5G URLLC and Tactile IoT technology to support this next generation of interconnected AR/VR applications. Through the use of IoT sensors and actuators, AR/VR applications will be aware of the environmental and user context, supporting human-centric adaptations of the application logic, and lifelike interactions with the virtual environment. We present potential use cases and the required technological building blocks. For each of them, we delve into the current state of the art and challenges that need to be addressed before the dream of remote AR/VR interaction can become reality

360° mulsemedia experience over next generation wireless networks - a reinforcement learning approach

The next generation of wireless networks targets aspiring key performance indicators, like very low latency, higher data rates and more capacity, paving the way for new generations of video streaming technologies, such as 360° or omnidirectional videos. One possible application that could revolutionize the streaming technology is the 360° MULtiple SEnsorial MEDIA (MULSEMEDIA) which enriches the 360° video content with other media objects like olfactory, haptic or even thermoceptic ones. However, the adoption of the 360° Mulsemedia applications might be hindered by the strict Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, like very large bandwidth and low latency for fast responsiveness to the users, inputs that could impact their Quality of Experience (QoE). To this extent, this paper introduces the new concept of 360° Mulsemedia as well as it proposes the use of Reinforcement Learning to enable QoS provisioning over the next generation wireless networks that influences the QoE of the end-users

Streaming and User Behaviour in Omnidirectional Videos

Omnidirectional videos (ODVs) have gone beyond the passive paradigm of traditional video, offering higher degrees of immersion and interaction. The revolutionary novelty of this technology is the possibility for users to interact with the surrounding environment, and to feel a sense of engagement and presence in a virtual space. Users are clearly the main driving force of immersive applications and consequentially the services need to be properly tailored to them. In this context, this chapter highlights the importance of the new role of users in ODV streaming applications, and thus the need for understanding their behaviour while navigating within ODVs. A comprehensive overview of the research efforts aimed at advancing ODV streaming systems is also presented. In particular, the state-of-the-art solutions under examination in this chapter are distinguished in terms of system-centric and user-centric streaming approaches: the former approach comes from a quite straightforward extension of well-established solutions for the 2D video pipeline while the latter one takes the benefit of understanding users’ behaviour and enable more personalised ODV streaming

Human-centric quality management of immersive multimedia applications

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) multimodal systems are the latest trend within the field of multimedia. As they emulate the senses by means of omni-directional visuals, 360 degrees sound, motion tracking and touch simulation, they are able to create a strong feeling of presence and interaction with the virtual environment. These experiences can be applied for virtual training (Industry 4.0), tele-surgery (healthcare) or remote learning (education). However, given the strong time and task sensitiveness of these applications, it is of great importance to sustain the end-user quality, i.e. the Quality-of-Experience (QoE), at all times. Lack of synchronization and quality degradation need to be reduced to a minimum to avoid feelings of cybersickness or loss of immersiveness and concentration. This means that there is a need to shift the quality management from system-centered performance metrics towards a more human, QoE-centered approach. However, this requires for novel techniques in the three areas of the QoE-management loop (monitoring, modelling and control). This position paper identifies open areas of research to fully enable human-centric driven management of immersive multimedia. To this extent, four main dimensions are put forward: (1) Task and well-being driven subjective assessment; (2) Real-time QoE modelling; (3) Accurate viewport prediction; (4) Machine Learning (ML)-based quality optimization and content recreation. This paper discusses the state-of-the-art, and provides with possible solutions to tackle the open challenges

360° mulsemedia experience over next generation wireless networks - a reinforcement learning approach

The next generation of wireless networks targets aspiring key performance indicators, like very low latency, higher data rates and more capacity, paving the way for new generations of video streaming technologies, such as 360° or omnidirectional videos. One possible application that could revolutionize the streaming technology is the 360° MULtiple SEnsorial MEDIA (MULSEMEDIA) which enriches the 360° video content with other media objects like olfactory, haptic or even thermoceptic ones. However, the adoption of the 360° Mulsemedia applications might be hindered by the strict Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, like very large bandwidth and low latency for fast responsiveness to the users, inputs that could impact their Quality of Experience (QoE). To this extent, this paper introduces the new concept of 360° Mulsemedia as well as it proposes the use of Reinforcement Learning to enable QoS provisioning over the next generation wireless networks that influences the QoE of the end-users