Proyecto Avanti: sistema de asistencia a la evacuación de incendios

Sobre AVANTI El soporte a las técnicas de evacuación en caso de incendio es un campo que todavía puede beneficiarse mucho de los últimos avances en tecnología, y particularmente en Inteligencia Ambiente (Ambient Intelligence), una evolución natural de lo que la década pasada se conoció como Computación Ubicua (Ubiquitous Computing). Se entende por este término la integración de la informática en el entorno de la persona, de forma que los ordenadores no se perciban como objetos diferenciados. Su objetivo es insertar dispositivos inteligentes tanto en el entorno como en apartados de uso diario, para que las personas puedan interactuar con ellos de una manera natural y desinhibida en todo tipo de situaciones y circunstancias. En nuestro caso, los ensayos de evacuación se venían llevando a cabo sin ningún soporte informático. Un sencillo procedimiento de “levántase y vaya hacia la salida” que en el mejor de los casos tan sólo era molesto para el que lo practicaba, obligándole a dejar sus quehaceres y dirigirse durante 5 minutos a la puerta de salida, sin posibilidad de poder mejorar en sus errores o de sentirse motivados. Utilizando como escenario la Facultad de Informática, presentamos formalmente AVANTI. El proyecto trata de aportar una plataforma intuitiva pero completa y potente para usar durante los ensayos de evacuación. Combinando posicionamiento WiFi donde el GPS no llega, predicción de movimiento gracias a los sensores que proporcionan los terminales Android y Realidad Aumentada, para poder contribuir a una experiencia más visual y estimuladora, AVANTI intenta contribuir a que los ensayos de incendio puedan ser informatizados. Estudiantes e instructores puedan analizar fácilmente fallos en los protocolos a seguir, y que llegada la situación de un incendio los ensayos puedan cumplir su objetivo: ser eficaces, y evitar que ningún miembro de la Facultad de Informática sufra daños personales. Nuestra desarrollo ha dado lugar a la publicación de una contribución en la conferencia UcamI’10 Sobre este documento El documento se encuentra organizado en cuatro grandes secciones, que aglutinan y organizan las distintas partes de la memoria. La primera sección es la introducción, en la que se hace un resumen de la problemática que se intenta resolver, de la aplicación y del estado del arte en los distintos campos que atañen a AVANTI. La segunda sección trata más a detalle el producto. Se describe la arquitectura modular y funcional de AVANTI, entrando en detalle en cada uno de sus componentes. La tercera sección define el proceso que se ha llevado a cabo para desarrollar el producto, formalizada según las distintas propuestas de Pressman [Press05] para metodología de desarrollo de software. La cuarta sección, conclusiones, evalúa los resultados obtenidos y aporta información relativa a las pruebas, estadísticas y apéndices de la aplicación, así como la bibliografía utilizada y en la que nos hemos basado para poder analizar la problemática desde el comienzo de este proyecto. El documento en su práctica totalidad (salvo las secciones que la normativa establece) ha sido escrito en castellano por motivos prácticos. Los contenidos abarcan prácticamente todo el ciclo de desarrollo de AVANTI; así como un análisis previo de la problemática de nuestro problema, sistemas existentes y cómo hemos intentado puentear todas las alternativas para poder solucionar nuestra problemática concreta. Sobre AVANTI hemos redactado aspectos técnicos de ingeniería del software, como manuales de usuario, descripciones, capturas de pantalla de la aplicación, etc. [ABSTRACT] About AVANTI Technical support for evacuation protocols in fire situations is an area that can still greatly benefit from the latest advances in technology, particularly in Ambient Intelligence (AmI), a natural evolution of what the last decade became known as Ubiquitous Computing (UC). This term could be understood as the integration of information technology in the person's environment, so that computers are not seen as separate objects. Its goal is to insert smart devices on both the environment and in everyday devices, in order to enable people to interact with them in a natural and uninhibited manner in all situations and circumstances. In the case of our Computer Science School, the evacuation tests were being carried out without computer support. Just by a simple "get up and go to exit" procedure, which at best was only valid to upset the user for loosing his time and stop his tasks for 5 minutes. The fire evacuation drills did not encourage the motivation on the user, and did not provide any feedback mechanism to correct his owns errors or improve the last trajectores of scape. Using the scenario of the Computer Science School from the Complutense University, we proudly introduce AVANTI. The project aims to provide an intuitive but comprehensive and powerful platform to use during evacuation drills. Combining wireless positioning where GPS has not come, motion prediction using the Androidpowered sensors and Augmented Reality in order to provide a more visual and stimulating experience, AVANTI attempts to contribute to the computerization of the fire evacuation drills, to help students and instructors to easily detect failures in the designed protocols, and when the situation of fire in the building happens, the drills can accomplish their goals: to be effective, and to prevent any member of the Computer Science School to suffer personal injuries. Our work has lead into the publicacion of a paper in the UCamI’10 conference About this document This document is organized into four sections, which organize the different parts of memory. The first section is the introduction, which provides a summary of the problem we have been trying to solve, the application and the state of the art in different fields regarding AVANTI. The second section deals more in detail with the product. We describe the architecture and the modular functionality of AVANTI,going into detail on each of its components. The third section defines the process that has been carried out to develop the product, formalized according to the different proposals from Pressman [Press05] for software development. The fourth section, the conclusions, evaluates the results and provides information concerning the tests, statistics of the application, appendix and the bibliography we have used in order to analyze the problematic we were trying to solve since the beginning of this project. The paper is almost entirely written in Spanish, for practical reasons. Contents cover practically the entire development cycle of AVANTI, as well as a previous analysis of the faced problems, existing systems and how we tried to bypass all the alternatives to solve our specific problems. Regarding AVANTI we have written about the technical aspects of software engineering, user manuals, descriptions, screenshots of the application, etc

Implicit muscle models for interactive character skinning

En animation de personnages 3D, la déformation de surface, ou skinning, est une étape cruciale. Son rôle est de déformer la représentation surfacique d'un personnage pour permettre son rendu dans une succession de poses spécifiées par un animateur. La plausibilité et la qualité visuelle du résultat dépendent directement de la méthode de skinning choisie. Sa rapidité d'exécution et sa simplicité d'utilisation sont également à prendre en compte pour rendre possible son usage interactif lors des sessions de production des artistes 3D. Les différentes méthodes de skinning actuelles se divisent en trois catégories. Les méthodes géométriques sont rapides et simples d'utilisation, mais leur résultats manquent de plausibilité. Les approches s'appuyant sur des exemples produisent des résultats réalistes, elles nécessitent en revanche une base de données d'exemples volumineuse, et le contrôle de leur résultat est fastidieux. Enfin, les algorithmes de simulation physique sont capables de modéliser les phénomènes dynamiques les plus complexes au prix d'un temps de calcul souvent prohibitif pour une utilisation interactive. Les travaux décrits dans cette thèse s'appuient sur Implicit Skinning, une méthode géométrique corrective utilisant une représentation implicite des surfaces, qui permet de résoudre de nombreux problèmes rencontrés avec les méthodes géométriques classiques, tout en gardant des performances permettant son usage interactif. La contribution principale de ces travaux est un modèle d'animation qui prend en compte les effets des muscles des personnages et de leur interactions avec d'autres éléments anatomiques, tout en bénéficiant des avantages apportés par Implicit Skinning. Les muscles sont représentés par une surface d'extrusion le long d'axes centraux. Les axes des muscles sont contrôlés par une méthode de simulation physique simplifiée. Cette représentation permet de modéliser les collisions des muscles entre eux et avec les os, d'introduire des effets dynamiques tels que rebonds et secousses, tout en garantissant la conservation du volume, afin de représenter le comportement réel des muscles. Ce modèle produit des déformations plus plausibles et dynamiques que les méthodes géométriques de l'état de l'art, tout en conservant des performances suffisantes pour permettre son usage dans une session d'édition interactive. Elle offre de plus aux infographistes un contrôle intuitif sur la forme des muscles pour que les déformations obtenues se conforment à leur vision artistique.Surface deformation, or skinning is a crucial step in 3D character animation. Its role is to deform the surface representation of a character to be rendered in the succession of poses specified by an animator. The quality and plausiblity of the displayed results directly depends on the properties of the skinning method. However, speed and simplicity are also important criteria to enable their use in interactive editing sessions. Current skinning methods can be divided in three categories. Geometric methods are fast and simple to use, but their results lack plausibility. Example-based approaches produce realistic results, yet they require a large database of examples while remaining tedious to edit. Finally, physical simulations can model the most complex dynamical phenomena, but at a very high computational cost, making their interactive use impractical. The work presented in this thesis are based on, Implicit Skinning, is a corrective geometric approach using implicit surfaces to solve many issues of standard geometric skinning methods, while remaining fast enough for interactive use. The main contribution of this work is an animation model that adds anatomical plausibility to a character by representing muscle deformations and their interactions with other anatomical features, while benefiting from the advantages of Implicit Skinning. Muscles are represented by an extrusion surface along a central axis. These axes are driven by a simplified physics simulation method, introducing dynamic effects, such as jiggling. The muscle model guarantees volume conservation, a property of real-life muscles. This model adds plausibility and dynamics lacking in state-of-the-art geometric methods at a moderate computational cost, which enables its interactive use. In addition, it offers intuitive shape control to animators, enabling them to match the results with their artistic vision

A presença do desejo: Os seres humanos e os humanos virtuais

As relações humanas passam por uma fase de transição: com o avanço tecnológico, os seres humanos começaram a se relacionar com os seres virtuais. Esta investigação pretende perceber, de forma panorâmica, como a união entre o Design e a Tecnologia começa a alterar o comportamento humano em um cenário mais complexo, no qual interagimos com seres virtuais em redes sociais, dispositivos eletrônicos e ambientes de entretenimento. É observado que, em alguns casos, estas virtualidades são capazes de criar uma experiência visual ao ponto dos seres humanos não identificarem diferenças entre o mundo real e o mundo virtual, criando uma conexão entre os observadores e as imagens tão sensível quanto a relação entre os próprios seres humanos. Para se aproximar do problema, é feita uma abordagem interpretativa através da Cultura Visual e da Psicanálise, além de uma análise de textos que refletem sobre estes desenvolvimentos e entrevistas com especialistas que nos dão suas ideias sobre este gênero de imagens que simulam os seres humanos.Human relationships are going through a transition phase: with technological advance, human beings have started to relate to virtual beings. This investigation intends to understand, in a panoramic way, how the union between Design and Technology begins to change human behavior in a more complex scenario, in which we interact with virtual beings in social networks, electronic devices and entertainment environments. It is observed that, in some cases, these virtualities are able to create a visual experience to the point where human beings do not identify differences between the real world and the virtual world, creating a connection between observers and images as sensitive as the relationship between the human beings themselves. To approach the problem, an interpretive and ethnographic approach is made through Visual Culture and Psychoanalysis, in addition to an investigation of texts that reflect on the development of these virtualities and interviews with specialists who give us their ideas about these visual objects

Shortest Route at Dynamic Location with Node Combination-Dijkstra Algorithm

Abstract— Online transportation has become a basic requirement of the general public in support of all activities to go to work, school or vacation to the sights. Public transportation services compete to provide the best service so that consumers feel comfortable using the services offered, so that all activities are noticed, one of them is the search for the shortest route in picking the buyer or delivering to the destination. Node Combination method can minimize memory usage and this methode is more optimal when compared to A* and Ant Colony in the shortest route search like Dijkstra algorithm, but can’t store the history node that has been passed. Therefore, using node combination algorithm is very good in searching the shortest distance is not the shortest route. This paper is structured to modify the node combination algorithm to solve the problem of finding the shortest route at the dynamic location obtained from the transport fleet by displaying the nodes that have the shortest distance and will be implemented in the geographic information system in the form of map to facilitate the use of the system. Keywords— Shortest Path, Algorithm Dijkstra, Node Combination, Dynamic Location (key words