Maintaining authenticity: transferring patina from the real world to the digital to retain narrative value

This research is concerned with utilizing new technologies to harvest existing narrative, symbolic and emotive value for use in a digital environment enabling "emotional durability" (Chapman, 2005) in future design. The projects discussed in this paper have been conducted as part of PhD research by Rosemary Wallin into 'Technology for Sustainable Luxury' at University of the Arts London, and visual effects technology research undertaken by Florian Stephens at University of West London. Jonathan Chapman describes vast consumer waste being "symptomatic of failed relationships" between consumers and the goods they buy, and suggests approaches for designing love, dependency, and even cherishability into products to give them a longer lifespan. 'Failed relationships' might also be observed in the transference of physical objects to their virtual cousins. Consider the throwaway nature of digital photography when compared to the carefully preserved prints in a family album. Apple often use a skeuomorphic (Hobbs, 2012) approach to user interface design, to digitally replicate the patina and 'value' of real objects. However, true transference of physical form and texture presumably occurs when an object is scanned and a virtual 3D model is created. This paper presents three practice-based approaches to storing and transferring patina from an original object, utilizing high resolution scanning, photogrammetry, mobile applications and 3D print technologies. The objective is not merely accuracy, but evocation of the emotive data connecting the digital and physical realm. As the human face holds experience in the lines and wrinkles of the skin, so the surface of an object holds its narrative. From the signs of the craftsman to the bumps and scratches that accumulate over the life of an item over time and generations, marks gather like evidence to be read by a familiar or a trained eye. According to the time and the culture these marks are read within, they will either add to or detract from its value. These marks can be captured via complex 3D modelling and scanning technologies, which allow detailed forms to be recreated as dense 3D wireframe, but the result is often unsatisfying. 3D greyscale surfaces can never fully capture the richness of patina. Authentic surfaces require other qualities such as colour, texture and depth, but there is something else - more difficult to define. Donald A. Norman expands on the idea of emotion and objects by describing three 'levels’ of design "visceral, behavioural and reflective". Visceral is based on "look, feel and sound", behavioural is focused on an object’s use, and reflective is concerned with its message. New technology is commonly seen in terms of its ability to increase efficiency, but this research has longer-term objectives: to repair or even rebuild Chapman's 'broken relationships' and enable ‘emotionally durable' design. The PhD that has formed the context for this paper examines the concept of luxury value, and how and why the value of patina has been replaced by fashion. Luxury goods are aspirational items often emulated in the bulk of mass production. If we are to alter behaviour around consumption, one approach might be to use technology to harvest patina as a way to retain emotional, symbolic and poetic value with a view to maintaining a relationship with the things we buy

Implementation of Open Source applications “Serious Game” for rehabilitation

Serious Games and Virtual Reality (VR) are present nowadays as an alternative to traditional rehabilitation therapies. This project describes the workflow to develop videogames for health monitoring as well as a source of entertainment for physiotherapy patients, primarily patients that suffer hemiparesis caused by a neurological disease like a stroke. We propose the last version of Microsoft Kinect sensors as low cost game controller and the software Unity to develop Open Source Rehabilitation Serious Games. These Serious Games try to imitate physiotherapy sessions performed in movement recovery therapies, reducing the waiting list of patients together with time and costs to hospitals. The premise is that the gameplay makes patients execute upper body exercises alongside equilibrium training, meanwhile they are monitored extracting useful data and results for the physicians.Ingeniería Biomédic

A review of computer vision-based approaches for physical rehabilitation and assessment

The computer vision community has extensively researched the area of human motion analysis, which primarily focuses on pose estimation, activity recognition, pose or gesture recognition and so on. However for many applications, like monitoring of functional rehabilitation of patients with musculo skeletal or physical impairments, the requirement is to comparatively evaluate human motion. In this survey, we capture important literature on vision-based monitoring and physical rehabilitation that focuses on comparative evaluation of human motion during the past two decades and discuss the state of current research in this area. Unlike other reviews in this area, which are written from a clinical objective, this article presents research in this area from a computer vision application perspective. We propose our own taxonomy of computer vision-based rehabilitation and assessment research which are further divided into sub-categories to capture novelties of each research. The review discusses the challenges of this domain due to the wide ranging human motion abnormalities and difficulty in automatically assessing those abnormalities. Finally, suggestions on the future direction of research are offered

Learning Algorithm Design for Human-Robot Skill Transfer

In this research, we develop an intelligent learning scheme for performing human-robot skills transfer. Techniques adopted in the scheme include the Dynamic Movement Prim- itive (DMP) method with Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), Gaussian Mixture Model (G- MM) with Gaussian Mixture Regression (GMR) and the Radical Basis Function Neural Networks (RBFNNs). A series of experiments are conducted on a Baxter robot, a NAO robot and a KUKA iiwa robot to verify the effectiveness of the proposed design.During the design of the intelligent learning scheme, an online tracking system is de- veloped to control the arm and head movement of the NAO robot using a Kinect sensor. The NAO robot is a humanoid robot with 5 degrees of freedom (DOF) for each arm. The joint motions of the operator’s head and arm are captured by a Kinect V2 sensor, and this information is then transferred into the workspace via the forward and inverse kinematics. In addition, to improve the tracking performance, a Kalman filter is further employed to fuse motion signals from the operator sensed by the Kinect V2 sensor and a pair of MYO armbands, so as to teleoperate the Baxter robot. In this regard, a new strategy is developed using the vector approach to accomplish a specific motion capture task. For instance, the arm motion of the operator is captured by a Kinect sensor and programmed through a processing software. Two MYO armbands with embedded inertial measurement units are worn by the operator to aid the robots in detecting and replicating the operator’s arm movements. For this purpose, the armbands help to recognize and calculate the precise velocity of motion of the operator’s arm. Additionally, a neural network based adaptive controller is designed and implemented on the Baxter robot to illustrate the validation forthe teleoperation of the Baxter robot.Subsequently, an enhanced teaching interface has been developed for the robot using DMP and GMR. Motion signals are collected from a human demonstrator via the Kinect v2 sensor, and the data is sent to a remote PC for teleoperating the Baxter robot. At this stage, the DMP is utilized to model and generalize the movements. In order to learn from multiple demonstrations, DTW is used for the preprocessing of the data recorded on the robot platform, and GMM is employed for the evaluation of DMP to generate multiple patterns after the completion of the teaching process. Next, we apply the GMR algorithm to generate a synthesized trajectory to minimize position errors in the three dimensional (3D) space. This approach has been tested by performing tasks on a KUKA iiwa and a Baxter robot, respectively.Finally, an optimized DMP is added to the teaching interface. A character recombination technology based on DMP segmentation that uses verbal command has also been developed and incorporated in a Baxter robot platform. To imitate the recorded motion signals produced by the demonstrator, the operator trains the Baxter robot by physically guiding it to complete the given task. This is repeated five times, and the generated training data set is utilized via the playback system. Subsequently, the DTW is employed to preprocess the experimental data. For modelling and overall movement control, DMP is chosen. The GMM is used to generate multiple patterns after implementing the teaching process. Next, we employ the GMR algorithm to reduce position errors in the 3D space after a synthesized trajectory has been generated. The Baxter robot, remotely controlled by the user datagram protocol (UDP) in a PC, records and reproduces every trajectory. Additionally, Dragon Natural Speaking software is adopted to transcribe the voice data. This proposed approach has been verified by enabling the Baxter robot to perform a writing task of drawing robot has been taught to write only one character

GESTURE RECOGNITION FOR PENCAK SILAT TAPAK SUCI REAL-TIME ANIMATION

The main target in this research is a design of a virtual martial arts training system in real-time and as a tool in learning martial arts independently using genetic algorithm methods and dynamic time warping. In this paper, it is still in the initial stages, which is focused on taking data sets of martial arts warriors using 3D animation and the Kinect sensor cameras, there are 2 warriors x 8 moves x 596 cases/gesture = 9,536 cases. Gesture Recognition Studies are usually distinguished: body gesture and hand and arm gesture, head and face gesture, and, all three can be studied simultaneously in martial arts pencak silat, using martial arts stance detection with scoring methods. Silat movement data is recorded in the form of oni files using the OpenNI ™ (OFW) framework and BVH (Bio Vision Hierarchical) files as well as plug-in support software on Mocap devices. Responsiveness is a measure of time responding to interruptions, and is critical because the system must be able to meet the demand

Tool for spatial and dynamic representation of artistic performances

This proposal aims to explore the use of available technologies for video representation of sets and performers in order to serve as support for composition processes and artistic performer rehearsals, while focusing in representing the performer’s body and its movements, and its relation with objects belonging to the three-dimensional space of their performances. This project’s main goal is to design and develop a system that can spatially represent the performer and its movements, by means of capturing processes and reconstruction using a camera device, as well as enhance the three-dimensional space where the performance occurs by allowing interaction with virtual objects and by adding a video component, either for documentary purposes, or for live performances effects (for example, using video mapping video techniques in captured video or projection during a performance)

Collaborative visualization and virtual reality in construction projects

In the Colombian construction industry it is recognized as a general practice that di!erent designers deliver 2D drawings to the project construction team -- Some 3D modeling applications are used but only with commercial intentions, thus wasting visualization tools that facilitate the understanding of the project, that allow the coordination of plans between di!erent specialists, and that can prevent errors with high impact on costs in the construction phase of the project -- As a continuation of the project "immersive virtual reality for construction" developed by EAFIT University, the present work intends to demonstrate how a collaborative virtual environment can be helpful in order to improve visualization of construction projects and achieve the interaction of di!erent specialties, evaluating the impact of collaborative work in the design process of the same -- The end result of this research is an application created using freely available tools and a use case scenario on how this application can be used to perform review meetings by di!erent specialist in real time -- Initial test on the system has been made with civil engineering students showing that this virtual reality tool ease the burden of performing reviews where traditionally plans and sharing the same geographical space were neede