Supporting real-time decision-making under stress in an online training environment

Multi-agency crisis management represents one of the most complex real-world situations, requiring rapid negotiation and decision-making under extreme pressure. However, the training provided to Gold Commanders (strategic planners) typically lacks the stress of a real crisis, while research tells us that behavior and decision-making are significantly affected by stress. It is therefore vital that training puts trainees under the pressure of a real crisis situation as far as possible. The Pandora+ system, developed from an EU FP7 research project, provides a unique, original, realistic, immersive, augmented reality training environment in which the stress of each individual trainee can be managed by the trainer, during a training event, with the support of system intelligence. The system uses AI planning techniques to model an unfolding crisis scenario, realized as an event network which can be dynamically updated by the trainer during a training event. This modelling includes points of decision for trainees managed by automated rules from a knowledge base, behavioral modelling of the trainees, and dynamic management of the environment to provide affective inputs to control and manage trainee stress. In this context, the system controls and reacts to trainee performance in relation to the events and decision points and can dynamically remodel and reconfigure the event network to respond appropriately to trainee decisions. The environment can also represent any missing trainees within the scenario and has the potential to provide training in any domain where a timeline-based scenario of events is required for training. This entire approach is completely novel in crisis training and has been rigorously tested in several trials, the most recent involving close to 150 participants, and has the potential to transform online learning in many domains, not just crisis management

Novel Techniques to Measure the Sensory, Emotional, and Physiological (Biometric) Responses of Consumers toward Foods and Packaging

This book reprinted from articles published in the Special Issue “Novel Techniques to Measure the Sensory, Emotional, and Physiological (Biometric) Responses of Consumers toward Foods and Packaging” of the journal Foods aims to provide a deeper understanding of novel techniques to measure the different sensory, emotional, and physiological responses toward foods. The editor hopes that the findings from this Special Issue can help the broader scientific community to understand the use of novel sensory science techniques that can be used in the evaluation of products

London Creative and Digital Fusion

date-added: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000 date-modified: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000date-added: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000 date-modified: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000The London Creative and Digital Fusion programme of interactive, tailored and in-depth support was designed to support the UK capital’s creative and digital companies to collaborate, innovate and grow. London is a globally recognised hub for technology, design and creative genius. While many cities around the world can claim to be hubs for technology entrepreneurship, London’s distinctive potential lies in the successful fusion of world-leading technology with world-leading design and creativity. As innovation thrives at the edge, where better to innovate than across the boundaries of these two clusters and cultures? This booklet tells the story of Fusion’s innovation journey, its partners and its unique business support. Most importantly of all it tells stories of companies that, having worked with London Fusion, have innovated and grown. We hope that it will inspire others to follow and build on our beginnings.European Regional Development Fund 2007-13

Pathway to Future Symbiotic Creativity

This report presents a comprehensive view of our vision on the development path of the human-machine symbiotic art creation. We propose a classification of the creative system with a hierarchy of 5 classes, showing the pathway of creativity evolving from a mimic-human artist (Turing Artists) to a Machine artist in its own right. We begin with an overview of the limitations of the Turing Artists then focus on the top two-level systems, Machine Artists, emphasizing machine-human communication in art creation. In art creation, it is necessary for machines to understand humans' mental states, including desires, appreciation, and emotions, humans also need to understand machines' creative capabilities and limitations. The rapid development of immersive environment and further evolution into the new concept of metaverse enable symbiotic art creation through unprecedented flexibility of bi-directional communication between artists and art manifestation environments. By examining the latest sensor and XR technologies, we illustrate the novel way for art data collection to constitute the base of a new form of human-machine bidirectional communication and understanding in art creation. Based on such communication and understanding mechanisms, we propose a novel framework for building future Machine artists, which comes with the philosophy that a human-compatible AI system should be based on the "human-in-the-loop" principle rather than the traditional "end-to-end" dogma. By proposing a new form of inverse reinforcement learning model, we outline the platform design of machine artists, demonstrate its functions and showcase some examples of technologies we have developed. We also provide a systematic exposition of the ecosystem for AI-based symbiotic art form and community with an economic model built on NFT technology. Ethical issues for the development of machine artists are also discussed

Observations and experiments in architecture and corporeality

Tese de Doutoramento em Arquitetura, com a especialização em Teoria e Prática do Projeto, apresentada na Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Doutor.N/

Emerging Affect Detection Methodologies in VR and future directions.

The uses of Virtual reality are constantly evolving, from healthcare treatments to evaluating commercial products, all of which would benefit from a better understanding of the emotional state of the individual. There is ongoing research into developing specially adapted methods for the recognition of the user’s affect while immersed within Virtual Reality. This paper outlines the approaches attempted and the available methodologies that embed sensors into wearable devices for real-time affect detection. These emerging technologies are introducing innovative ways of studying and interpreting emotion related data produced within immersive experience

Digital technologies for innovative mental health rehabilitation

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental illness, characterized by the loss of the notion of reality, failing to distinguish it from the imaginary. It affects the patient in life’s major areas, such as work, interpersonal relationships, or self-care, and the usual treatment is performed with the help of anti- psychotic medication, which targets primarily the hallucinations, delirium, etc. Other symptoms, such as the decreased emotional expression or avolition, require a multidisciplinary approach, including psychopharmacology, cognitive training, and many forms of therapy. In this context, this paper addresses the use of digital technologies to design and develop innovative rehabilitation techniques, particularly focusing on mental health rehabilitation, and contributing for the promotion of well-being and health from a holistic perspective. In this context, serious games and virtual reality allows for creation of immersive environments that contribute to a more effective and lasting recovery, with improvements in terms of quality of life. The use of machine learning techniques will allow the real-time analysis of the data collected during the execution of the rehabilitation procedures, as well as enable their dynamic and automatic adaptation according to the profile and performance of the patients, by increasing or reducing the exercises’ difficulty. It relies on the acquisition of biometric and physiological signals, such as voice, heart rate, and game performance, to estimate the stress level, thus adapting the difficulty of the experience to the skills of the patient. The system described in this paper is currently in development, in collaboration with a health unit, and is an engineering effort that combines hardware and software to develop a rehabilitation tool for schizophrenic patients. A clinical trial is also planned for assessing the effectiveness of the system among negative symptoms in schizophrenia patients.This work is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Regional Operational Program North 2020, within the scope of Project GreenHealth - Digital strategies in biological assets to improve well-being and promote green health, Norte-01-0145-FEDER-000042.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio